Jessica Hecht to Join Laura Linney in the World Premiere of SUMMER, 1976

Tony Award & Emmy Award Nominee Jessica Hecht (The Assembled Parties, "Friends") will join Tony Award & Academy Award nominee Laura Linney (My Name is Lucy Barton, "Ozark") in Manhattan Theatre Club's world premiere of Summer, 1976 written by Pulitzer Prize winner David Auburn (Proof, The Columnist) and directed by Tony winner Daniel Sullivan (Proof, Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes).

Four-time Emmy Award winner & Academy Award nominee Laura Linney (My Name Is Lucy Barton, Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes) and Tony nominee Jessica Hecht (The Assembled Parties) return to Broadway in a new play by Pulitzer Prize-winning author and fellow MTC alum David Auburn (Proof, The Columnist). This deeply moving, insightful piece is about connection, memories, and the small moments that can change the course of our lives. Over one fateful summer, an unlikely friendship develops between Diana (Linney), a fiercely iconoclastic artist and single mom, and Alice (Hecht), a free-spirited yet naive young housewife. As the Bicentennial is celebrated across the country, these two young women in Ohio navigate motherhood, ambition, and intimacy, and help each other discover their own independence. Directing is Tony winner Daniel Sullivan (Proof, Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes).

Summer, 1976 will begin previews on Tuesday, April 4, 2023 ahead of a Tuesday, April 25, 2023 Opening Night at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre (261 West 47th Street).

The creative team for Summer, 1976 will be announced soon.

The 2022-23 season marks Lynne Meadow's 50th Anniversary as Artistic Director of Manhattan Theatre Club. Meadow was joined by Executive Producer Barry Grove in her third season, and together they have helmed MTC for 48 years. MTC's mission, which Meadow created in 1972 and has implemented since, is to develop and present new work in a dynamic, supportive environment; to identify and collaborate with the most exciting new as well as accomplished artists; and to produce a diverse repertoire of innovative, entertaining, and thought-provoking plays and musicals by American and international playwrights. Over five decades, MTC has grown from a small off-off-Broadway showcase into one of the country's most prestigious and award-winning theatre companies, creating approximately 600 world, American, New York and Broadway premieres. Our productions have earned 7 Pulitzer Prizes, 28 Tony Awards, 50 Drama Desk Awards and 49 Obie Awards amongst many other honors. Our Broadway home is the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre (261 West 47th Street) and our two Off-Broadway theatres are at New York City Center (131 West 55th Street). MTC is an anti-racist organization that respects and honors all voices, and upholds the values of community and equity.

MTC SUBSCRIPTIONS AND PATRON MEMBERSHIPS

To join MTC's season of plays as a Subscriber or a Patron, call the MTC Clubline at 212-399-3050 or go to www.manhattantheatreclub.com.

To sign up for MTC's "30 Under 35" program, offering $30 tickets for theatregoers age 35 and under, visit www.manhattantheatreclub.com/30under35/.

TICKETING INFORMATION

Single ticket information for Summer, 1976 will go on sale in January 2023.

BIOGRAPHIES

Jessica Hecht

received an Emmy Award nomination for her performance in the Netflix series "Special." She has been seen on television in the limited series "Super Pumped" and "The Loudest Voice" and in her recurring roles in "The Sinner," "Dickinson," "The Boys" and "Succession." She is also recognizable to television audiences as 'Susan Bunch' on the iconic television series "Friends" and 'Gretchen Schwarz' on "Breaking Bad." She has played memorable roles on "Bored to Death," "High Maintenance," "Falling Water," "The Single Guy," and "Red Oaks." Her film performances include A+, Anesthesia, J. Edgar, The Grey Zone, The Sitter, My Soul To Take, Dan In Real Life, Sideways, The Atlantic City Story and The Sunlit Night. An acclaimed stage actress, Hecht has appeared on Broadway in productions of The Price opposite Mark Ruffalo, Fiddler On The Roof opposite Danny Burstein, The Assembled Parties opposite Judith Light, Harvey opposite Jim Parsons, After The Fall opposite Carla Gugino, The Last Night of Ballyhoo opposite Paul Rudd, Brighton Beach Memoirs opposite Laurie Metcalf, Julius Caesar opposite Denzel Washington, and A View From the Bridge opposite Liev Schreiber and Scarlett Johansson, for which she was nominated for a Tony Award for her performance. Off-Broadway, she has appeared in King Lear opposite John Lithgow and Annette Bening, Stage Kiss opposite Sandra Oh, Three Sisters opposite Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard, and at Lincoln Center Theater in Admissions for which she received an Outer Critics Circle Award nomination and an Obie Award.

Laura Linney

In 2018, Laura Linney made her London theatre debut in Richard Eyre's My Name Is Lucy Barton, the stage play adapted from the Elizabeth Strout novel of the same name, which then made its Broadway debut at Manhattan Theatre Club to rave reviews and her Tony nomination for Best Actress in a Play.

Other Broadway credits include Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes, Time Stands Still and Sight Unseen, all at MTC; Arthur Miller's The Crucible, directed by Richard Eyre opposite Liam Neeson, Six Degrees of Separation, Honour, Uncle Vanya, Les Liaisons, Dangereuses, Holiday and The Seagull.

For her role as Wendy Byrde in "Ozark" on Netflix, staring opposite Jason Bateman, she recently received her seventh Emmy Award nomination. Upcoming is The Miracle Club, where she is set to star opposite Maggie Smith and Kathy Bates and Searchlight's Suncoast, opposite Woody Harrelson and Nico Parker.

Laura's numerous film credits include Falling, The Roads Not Taken, The Dinner, Nocturnal Animals, Sully, Genius, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, You Can Count On Me, Kinsey, The Savages, The Fifth Estate, Hyde Park On Hudson, The Squid And The Whale, Mystic River, Absolute Power, The Truman Show, Primal Fear, The Mothman Prophecies, Love Actually, P.S., The House Of Mirth, The Details and Congo, among many others.

Laura starred in and served as an executive producer for the Showtime Series "The Big C" for four seasons, for which she won a few awards. She also won multiple awards for her portrayal of Abigail Adams in the HBO miniseries "John Adams" directed by Tom Hooper. Laura served as an executive producer and starred in the highly anticipated Netflix revival of "Tales of the City." She appeared as Kelsey Grammer's final girlfriend in the last six episodes of "Frasier," was directed by Stanley Donen in Love Letters, and starred opposite Joanne Woodward in Blind Spot.

Linney has been nominated three times for an Academy Award, five times for a Tony Award, eight times for a SAG award, once for a BAFTA Award and seven times for a Golden Globe. She has won one Screen Actors Guild Award, one National Board of Review Award, two Golden Globes and four Emmy Awards. She holds two honorary Doctorates from her alma maters, Brown University and The Juilliard School.

David Auburn

(Playwright) Plays include The Adventures of Augie March (based on the Saul Bellow novel, Court Theatre, Chicago 2019), Lost Lake (MTC 2014), The Columnist (MTC/Broadway 2011), and Proof (MTC; 2001 Pulitzer Prize, Tony Award, New York Drama Critics Circle Award). Film work includes The Girl in the Park (writer/director), Georgetown, and The Lake House, as well as current television projects for HBO and Amblin Television. He is artistic associate at the Berkshire Theatre Group, where he has directed The Skin of Our Teeth, The Petrified Forest, Anna Christie, and A Delicate Balance, among other plays. Other directing credits include Long Day's Journey into Night (Court, Chicago) and the Off-Broadway world premiere of Michael Weller's Side Effects (MCC). A former Guggenheim Fellow, he lives in New York City. He/him.

Daniel Sullivan

(Director) Manhattan Theatre Club directorial credits include The Nap, Saint Joan, Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes, The Country House, The Snow Geese, The Columnist, Lost Lake, Accent on Youth, Good People, Time Stands Still, Rabbit Hole, After the Night and the Music, Brooklyn Boy, Sight Unseen, Psycopathia Sexualis, and Proof. For The Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park he has directed Coriolanus, Troilus and Cressida, Cymbeline, King Lear, Comedy of Errors, As You Like It, All's Well That Ends Well, The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and The Merry Wives of Windsor. Among other Broadway credits are Stories By Heart, Orphans, Glengarry Glen Ross , The Homecoming, Prelude to a Kiss, Julius Caesar, I'm Not Rappaport, Morning's at Seven,t he 2000 production of A Moon for the Misbegotten, Ah, Wilderness!, The Sisters Rosensweig, Conversations with my Father, and The Heidi Chronicles and Henry IV at the Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles. Among his Off-Broadway credits are If I Forget, The Night Watcher, Intimate Apparel, Far East, Spinning into Butter, Stuff Happens, Dinner with Friends, and The Substance of Fire. From 1981 to 1997, he served as artistic director of Seattle Repertory Theatre. Sullivan is a Swanlund Professor in the College of Fine Arts at the University of Illinois, Urbana.