About ATW
Photo Gallery
Contact Us
Theatre References
The Wing Blog
WATCH & LISTEN
Working in the Theatre
In The Wings
Downstage Center
Career Guides
Play That Changed My Life
SDCF Masters of the Stage
TBL This Is Broadway
EDUCATION PROGRAMS
SpringboardNYC
Theatre Intern Group
GRANTS & AWARDS
National Theatre Co. Grants
Jonathan Larson® Grants
Hewes Design Awards
Tony Awards®
SUPPORT US
Support ATW
Newsletter
Join Our Email List
null

Downstage Center
Go in-depth with the leading artists and professionals working on stage today when you go Downstage Center. Downstage Center is the American Theatre Wing's acclaimed weekly theatrical interview program that spotlights the creative talents on Broadway, Off-Broadway, across the country and around the world, with in-depth conversations that simply can't be found anywhere else. Now in its sixth year, Downstage Center, produced in association with CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, has been featured by the Associated Press and Slate.com as the place to go for theatrical talk. New editions will be available every other Wednesday from this website, where you can listen online, download the programs or subscribe to the podcast.

Jessica Hecht
Flash is needed to play this media.
Download Audio (mp3)

With:
Jessica Hecht

Jessica Hecht, now on Broadway as Eddie Carbone's long-suffering but cleared-eyed wife Beatrice in the Broadway revival of A View From The Bridge, talks about her role in the play's tragic love triangle and why her preparation for this performance was so different than her usual practice. She also discusses how she began studying at Connecticut College, only to have the famed actor Morris Carnovsky send her off to New York to study at New York University; her earliest roles, including an appearance in Hamlet at Hartford Stage, near her hometown of Bloomfield CT, as a silent lady-in-waiting to Pamela Payton-Wright as Gertrude; her Broadway debut in The Last Night of Ballyhoo where, after being raised in an observant Jewish home, she appeared as part of a Southern family disconnected from their Jewish roots; how she handled portraying a character alternating between dawning love and heart-rending tragedy in the non-linear Stop Kiss; working on After The Fall at the Roundabout with Arthur Miller and her interaction with the legendary playwright; playing in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar with Denzel Washington -- and how that yielded the greatest entrance ovation she's ever experienced; the joy and pain of opening in Brighton Beach Memoirs but never being able to perform for an audience in the prematurely closed Broadway Bound; and why she's drawn back to the Williamstown Theatre Festival year after year.

Original air date - March 17, 2010
Running Time - 1:00:51



If you enjoyed this episode of Downstage Center you may want to:

Subscribe to podcast Subscribe to our podcasts