“I never want to perform in one of my own plays, and, in fact, I have never performed in one of my own plays before now,” says actor and playwright Tracy Letts, whose latest play to hit Broadway, The Minutes, is about a city council meeting in a fictional town. When the show first premiered at Steppenwolf in Chicago, the role of the mayor was played by another performer. In New York, Letts steps in. “Mayor Superba is just a good role for me,” explains Letts. “I mean, objectively speaking, I would cast me.”
“In Chicago, we are the home team,” says The Minutes director Shapiro, who served as artistic director of Steppenwolf Theatre Company from 2014 to 2021. “Oddly, [audiences there] can be harder on us.” That said, she adds, “Every time we work in New York, we always suspect no one will come. So we’re always pleasantly surprised.”
