Yellow Face: A Semi-autobiographical Comedy

Summer, 1976

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Summer, 1976

By: David Auburn

Narrated by: Laura Linney, Jessica Hecht

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About this listen

Starring four-time Emmy Award winner and Academy Award nominee Laura Linney and Tony Award nominee Jessica Hecht, Summer, 1976 is an intimate and insightful exploration of friendship, ambition, and the struggle for independence.

Written by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Auburn, this critically acclaimed Broadway hit chronicles the lives of two young mothers as they forge an unlikely bond during the summer of America’s Bicentennial. As the days heat up, they navigate a tumultuous relationship and discover how friendships define us, divide us, and permanently alter our sense of ourselves.

A fully immersive listening experience and a must-hear for theater enthusiasts everywhere, Summer, 1976 is a deeply moving portrayal of the small moments that can change the course of our lives.

Drama & Plays

United States

World Literature

Heartfelt

Summer

Behind the Scenes with Jessica Hecht & Laura Linney

0:00

David Auburn

Daniel Sullivan

About the Creator

David Auburn is a playwright, director, and screenwriter. Plays include Summer, 1976, The Adventures of Augie March (based on the Saul Bellow novel), Lost Lake, The Columnist, and Proof (2001 Pulitzer Prize, Tony Award, New York Drama Critics Circle Award). Film work includes The Girl in the Park (writer/director), Georgetown, and The Lake House. He is associate artistic director at the Berkshire Theatre Group, where he has directed many productions. A former Guggenheim Fellow, he lives in New York City.

About the Director

Daniel Sullivan at the Public Theater’s Shakespeare in the Park: Coriolanus, Troilus and Cressida, Cymbeline, King Lear, Comedy of Errors, As You Like It, All’s Well That Ends Well, The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and The Merry Wives of Windsor. Among his Broadway credits are The Nap, Stories By Heart, Saint Joan, Sylvia, The Country House, The Snow Geese, Orphans, Glengarry Glen Ross, The Columnist, Good People, Time Stands Still, Accent on Youth, The Homecoming, Prelude to a Kiss, Rabbit Hole, After the Night and the Music, Julius Caesar, Brooklyn Boy, Sight Unseen, I’m Not Rappaport, Morning’s at Seven, Proof, the 2000 production of A Moon for the Misbegotten, Ah, Wilderness!, The Sisters Rosensweig, Conversations with My Father, and The Heidi Chronicles. Henry IV at the Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles. Among his off-Broadway credits are If I Forget, The Night Watcher, Intimate Apparel, Far East, Spinning into Butter, Stuff Happens, Dinner with Friends, and The Substance of Fire. From 1981 to 1997, he served as artistic director of Seattle Repertory Theatre. Sullivan is a Swanlund Professor in the College of Fine Arts at the University of Illinois, Urbana.

Laura Linney

Jessica Hecht

About the Performer

Laura Linney is an American actress who works in film, television, and theater.

In June 2018, Laura made her London theater debut in Richard Eyre’s limited three-week run of My Name Is Lucy Barton, the stage play adapted from the Elizabeth Strout novel of the same name, and opened to rave reviews. Back by popular demand, the one-woman show returned to the London stage in 2019 and made its Broadway debut to rave reviews. The story follows Lucy Barton, who, after an operation, wakes to find her estranged mother at the end of her bed, bringing back memories of her early life in the country, her subsequent escape to New York, and the two women’s complex relationships. Linney was nominated for a Tony Award for her Broadway run.

Most recently, Linney can be seen in The Miracle Club, where she stars opposite Maggie Smith and Kathy Bates. The film is a comedy about the journey of working-class women from Dublin, whose pilgrimage to Lourdes leads them to discover each other’s friendship and their own personal miracles. Linney was also recently back on the Broadway stage, starring opposite Jessica Hecht in Summer, 1976, a play written by David Auburn following two women that form an unlikely friendship over playdates with their respective young daughters during the summer of 1976, the American Bicentennial.

Linney stars in all four seasons of the critically acclaimed Netflix original series Ozark, where she plays Wendy Byrde, starring opposite Jason Bateman. The series follows the Byrdes as a married couple who relocate their family to the Ozarks following a money-laundering scheme gone wrong. Laura received her seventh Emmy Award nomination and her ninth SAG Award nomination for her portrayal as Wendy Byrde.

Coming up for Linney is Suncoast, a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story by Laura Chinn about a young woman dealing with her brother's serious illness, and Wildcat, directed by Ethan Hawke, following the life of writer Flannery O'Connor while she was struggling to publish her first novel.

Laura Linney’s numerous film credits include Falling, The Roads Not Taken, The Dinner, Nocturnal Animals, Sully, Genius, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, You Can Count on Me, Kinsey, The Savages, The Fifth Estate, Hyde Park on Hudson, The Squid and the Whale, Mystic River, Absolute Power, The Truman Show, Primal Fear, The Mothman Prophecies, Love Actually, P.S., The House of Mirth, The Details, and Congo, among many others.

Laura starred in and served as an executive producer for the Showtime Series The Big C for four seasons for which she won a few awards. She also won multiple awards for her portrayal of Abigail Adams in the HBO miniseries John Adams, directed by Tom Hooper. Laura served as an executive producer and starred in the highly anticipated Netflix revival of Tales of the City. She appeared as Kelsey Grammer’s final girlfriend in the last six episodes of Frasier; was directed by Stanley Donen in Love Letters, and starred opposite Joanne Woodward in Blind Spot.

She has also appeared in many Broadway productions, most notably The Little Foxes, Time Stands Still, and Sight Unseen, directed by Daniel Sullivan and written by Donald Margulies. Additional credits include Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, directed by Richard Eyre opposite Liam Neeson, Six Degrees of Separation, Honour, Uncle Vanya, Les Liaisons, Dangereuses, Holiday, and The Seagull.

Linney has been nominated three times for an Academy Award, five times for a Tony Award, nine times for a SAG Award, once for a BAFTA Award, and eight times for a Golden Globe. She has won one Screen Actors Guild Award, one National Board of Review Award, two Golden Globes, and four Emmy Awards. She holds two honorary doctorates from her alma maters, Brown University and The Juilliard School.

About the Performer

Jessica Hecht received an Emmy Award nomination for her performance in the Netflix series Special. She is recognizable for her roles in Breaking Bad, Friends, and The Sinner, as well as recurring roles in Dickinson, The Boys, Succession, and Bored to Death. An acclaimed stage actress, Hecht has appeared on Broadway in productions of The Price, Fiddler on the Roof, The Assembled Parties, Harvey, After the Fall, The Last Night of Ballyhoo, Brighton Beach Memoirs, Julius Caesar, A View from the Bridge (Tony Award nomination), and Summer, 1976 opposite Laura Linney (Tony Award nomination). Off-Broadway, she has appeared in King Lear opposite John Lithgow and Annette Bening, Letters from Max by Sarah Ruhl, Stop Kiss opposite Sandra Oh, Three Sisters opposite Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard, and Josh Harmon's Admissions, for which she received an Obie Award. Jessica created The Campfire Project in 2017, which brings wellness-based theater workshops to refugee camps around the world.

A bittersweet play about female friendship

Laura Linney and Jessica Hecht give an acting master class in David Auburn's gentle, two-person play about female friendship. Diana (Linney) and Alice (Hecht) are both white, college-educated, Midwestern women whose ambitions have been derailed by having children and changing their goals. It's those kids that bring them together as friends, although they couldn't be more different in personalities, their approach to parenting, or living their frustrated lives. Having Linney and Hecht close to my ears is pure pleasure, and the story is so real and relatable (never giving in to easy sentimentality) that the bittersweet ending leaves an indelible mark.

Jerry P.

Audible Editor

ORIGINALS

Relatable Friendship Story • Engaging Character Development • Outstanding Performances • Emotional Depth

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The voice of Alice was too affected with vocal fry and dumb sounding accents of 2023 young women. It pulled me out of the story every time I heard it.

The affected voice