Interview: Jessica Hecht on Pulling Double Duty in Letters From Max and Summer, 1976

It’s a crazy couple of months for Jessica Hecht. By day, she’s rehearsing David Auburn’s Summer, 1976, a new Broadway play for Manhattan Theatre Club directed by Daniel Sullivan and also starring Laura Linney. By night, she’s playing the dramatist Sarah Ruhl in the emotional Signature Theatre Company production of Ruhl’s Letters from Max, a ritual, through March 19. If that’s not enough, in the latter work, Hecht is playing opposite two different actors — Ben Edelman and Zane Pais — who alternate in the title role. Doing it all is throwing her for a little bit of a loop. But Hecht is a pro, and she’s drinking it all in.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

I was expecting Letters from Max to be a downer, given the subject matter. But I left uplifted.
I think a lot of people come expecting Michael Cristofer’s play ”The Shadow Box” or anything like that, set in hospices. But Max was part of such an eccentric, funny group of writers and artists from Yale that you couldn’t imagine them not finding some way to have joy amid this despair.

I know you and Sarah have worked together before, but the way you capture the essence of her without doing a Sarah —
Impression.

Yeah.
Oh, I’m so glad. You know, it’s funny. At the beginning of the process, I tried to use a part of my voice that I thought was near where Sarah’s voice lies. I was playing around, and then one day I was making a joke about something and I sort of became half myself and half Sarah, and Kate, the director, said “You’ve got it.” I liberated myself from the impulse to think about how Sarah sounds and moves or whatever, and we found that this hybrid was more authentic than anything else.

It must keep you on your toes to do this play four times a week with Ben, who you had already worked with in Admissions, and four times a week with Zane, who you’d never worked with before.
It does. They both have a tremendous amount of depth and breadth in what they’re doing, but they have very different rhythms. You realize, when you’re doing a piece that’s just two characters, that you’re very reliant on the rhythms to carry you through, to make certain that you’re literally on the right page. Somewhere in my mind, I clocked the two rhythms as though they’re just two pieces of music in a set, and we do one set one night and one set the other.

They’re both such genuinely dear men to me. Zane’s parents [actors Lisa Emery and Josh Pais] are actors that I admire so deeply, and I’ve worked with his dad many times. I have taken Zane into my heart as an extension of his father, with his own creative energy on top of that. When I’m working with him, it’s almost like I’m working with somebody that I — and this is such a specific feeling — might have known in college or my early career, which is when I knew his parents. It’s very weird, it makes me feel hip and cool and young again.  

And with Ben, I started in a mother-son relationship in Admissions. I don’t still think of myself as his mother, but I sort of see myself more as a traditional teacher looking at this extraordinary young man. I probably feel like my middle-aged self with Ben, and I feel like my hip alter ego with Zane.

You’re doing double duty now and rehearsing Summer, 1976 for Manhattan Theatre Club by day. How is it going at this point?
It’s going, in my mind, as well as possible. I am so grateful that Laura Linney is opposite me because she has tremendous insight into how to make a new play, and she’s incredibly meticulous in dissecting where we are going. This idea of how to navigate a big piece of text is something that I think she’s extraordinary at. And Dan Sullivan, I would say he’s the Fauci of the theater — I don’t know if he’d appreciate being called the Fauci of the theater — but he understands how to fix anything and he’s so dignified, and he has so much depth and understanding. And David Auburn has written something that really speaks not just to female friendship, but friendship in general. There’s something very deep in what he’s constructed.

I think Laura and I are both having flashbacks; it takes place at a time that was significant for us. We were both 11 in 1976 so we both have this memory of the first middle-school dance, and the world just suddenly blossoming. My mother was going through a divorce, and Laura had similar memories of looking at her mother at that time. I remember that period through my mother’s lens and her attempts at self-possession and what was going on in the world. It brings back a lot of reflection on my childhood.

Is this your first time doing two shows at once?
No. The last time I did it was like 25 years ago in Los Angeles. I did Mad Forest by Caryl Churchill at the same time I was doing another play. I did that a lot when I was starting out, but it was doing TV shows while I was doing plays. They’re different beasts because when you’re on a set, you have that downtime. When I was doing Stop Kiss, I was rehearsing The Last Night of Ballyhoo at a certain point. But never really as a middle-aged person.

What is that like for you at this phase of your life and career?
I think it’s about mindfulness. When we’re young, we all want to attract attention to whatever our capabilities are. We’re excited for people to see that we have some ability to deal with difficult situations and succeed. At this point, yes, I would like to succeed in both plays, but it’s an exercise for me in being where you are in this moment and not project ahead or think about how hard it is or success.

Yesterday, I went into rehearsal after this five-show weekend and I sat down and I thought “They’re gonna think I’m not prepared. I bet they’re all thinking ‘why did she think she could do this?'” You go through all these feelings. As the day progressed, like an hour in, I got my sea legs.

I say mindfulness not with any bravado, as though I’ve accomplished mindfulness. It’s just my goal to be mindful. Which I think is such an overused word, but it really means being able to just be present in the moment and not spin out. Being in the moment is so much about acting, too. So that’s what I’m focused on at this point.