Alden Ehrenreich Talks Broadway Debut in Becky Shaw and Launching Huron Station Playhouse in LA

Alden Ehrenreich has spent much of the last decade working with some of the most celebrated filmmakers in modern cinema. From playing the young Han Solo in Solo: A Star Wars Story to memorable turns in films like Weapons, Oppenheimer, and Hail, Caesar!, he has built a career defined by eclectic choices and collaborations with directors ranging from Francis Ford Coppola and the Coen Brothers to Christopher Nolan. But despite his extensive screen work, theater has always been part of Ehrenreich’s artistic home.

Now, he’s making his Broadway debut in Gina Gionfriddo’s relationship comedy Becky Shaw, a Second Stage production at the Helen Hayes Theater. At the same time, Ehrenreich is helping build a theater community of his own in Los Angeles, launching the Huron Station Playhouse, a new company devoted to intimate, actor-driven work and the development of new plays.

We spoke with Ehrenreich about why Becky Shaw felt like the right project to bring him to Broadway, what he loves about performing live, and how his growing commitment to theater is shaping the next chapter of his career.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Is Becky Shaw your stage debut?
In some ways, it is, but it’s not my stage debut exactly. I had a theater company in college and for a few years afterwards, and we did original plays and put up work at theaters we’d rented in New York. I did a couple of plays in LA, and I am opening a theater, where we’ve done a bunch of staged readings over the last year. I’ve been on stage, but this is my first professional theater play.

Was Broadway always something that you wanted to do?
Yeah. The origins of me wanting to be an actor came from seeing plays as much as movies. I went to NYU theater school and that was on everyone’s mind at the time. Over the last few years, I’ve been looking for the right thing to carve out the time to do, and this was as exciting as anything I’ve read.

It’s one of my favorite contemporary plays.
I’m so glad to hear that. I love it, too.

You’re opening a theater in Los Angeles?
Yeah. The theater’s called Huron Station Playhouse. It’s a 120-year-old trolley station, and the idea is to do two things. One is to create a home for a certain kind of intimate, character-driven play that, on the East side of L.A., doesn’t always have the right place for it. To champion contemporary theater from the last 20 years that LA audiences maybe haven’t seen in mass, at an elevated level with great actors.

The other goal is to become a home [for artists]. LA can be a very isolating place, and there are so many great actors and writers. We have a playwright circle that Claire Barron and Agnes Borinsky ran, and we had all these super-established playwrights who were excited to get in a space together and develop stuff in a way that’s protected. We’ve done seven staged readings and we’re gonna launch with our first full production this fall. We did a new play that’s gonna open in London soon called Tender by Dave Harris, directed by Steve Broadnax, and it was spectacular.

It must be nice to jump into theater in New York while doing this with your company at the same time.
It’s amazingly fortuitous that this worked out the way it did, that they’re happening at the same time because I’m learning so much. This is gonna inform that first production. I’ve been sitting in three-day rehearsals for these staged readings over the last two years. Getting to really delve into Becky Shaw is wonderful.

What are you most excited about in terms of making your Broadway debut?
To become at home in it. To be able to play with an audience. My hope is to work hard enough now, and work closely enough with these wonderful artists, that when it’s happening, I can be present enough to enjoy it. To enjoy that magical, chemical reaction that happens between people on stage and an audience.