After signaling he’d be back for the upcoming season, Scott Rudin is unveiling his formal return to Broadway with a new play.
Rudin and IAC mogul Barry Diller are set to produce Samuel D. Hunter’s Little Bear Ridge Road for an 18-week limited run with Laurie Metcalf and Micah Stock beginning on Oct. 7 ahead of an Oct. 30 opening night at Broadway’s Booth Theatre.
For the 95-minute play, Metcalf and Stock will be reprising roles from a run at Chicago’s The Steppenwolf Theatre Company last year. John Drea and Meighan Gerachis will also be joining the Broadway version from the original run.
The logline for the play: “On the remote outskirts of a small Idaho town, a razor-tongued aunt and her long-estranged nephew find themselves suddenly back in each other’s orbit—two lonely souls with a crumbling house to sell and a tangled history to unravel.”
The once-prolific producer had mostly sat on the sidelines of the Broadway industry since a Hollywood Reporter investigation in 2021 had detailed multiple allegations of abusive behavior in claims from ex-staffers. The story ricocheted within theatrical circles on what had been known or discussed and prompted Actors Equity at the time to call on employees to be released from non-disclosure agreements.
When Rudin expressed to The New York Times in March that he was prepping multiple plays, the union released a statement saying it’d look to safeguard for “bullying, har***ment and discrimination” for those working on projects he would be producing. “If Rudin is producing on Equity agreements, we will enforce them. They include strong protections against bullying, har***ment and discrimination – stronger now even than when he last used them in 2021,” a rep for Actors Equity stated.
During his conversation with the Times this year, Rudin addressed the allegations and the fallout while saying he was planning three projects. “I have a lot more self-control than I had four years ago,” he told the paper. “I learned I don’t matter that much, and I think that’s very healthy” and noted: “I don’t want to let anybody down.”
