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, harassment 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, harassment 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.”
