About the Play:

Summer, 1976 is a full-length drama by David Auburn. A funny, deeply moving and sharply observed two-hander about friendship, motherhood and the moments that shape our lives, Summer, 1976 follows two very different women whose unexpected connection transforms them over the course of one unforgettable summer.

Summer, 1976 tells the story of two young mothers as they forge an unlikely bond and discover how friendships define and divide us. The midsummer of the mid-seventies finds two women thrown into one another's orbit through a faculty babysitting co-op in college-town Ohio. Alice and Diana couldn't be more different, one a free-spirited professor's wife and the other a driven and self-critical artist and single mom. While their young daughters play, they open up to each other about the realities of their lives and connect in ways that neither of them could have expected. As they navigate migraines and marriage crises, tantrums and road trips, they build an expansive and intimate friendship as full of possibility, and as fleeting, as summer. Summer, 1976 traces each woman's growing disquiet with the compromises they've made, and the transformative power of a friendship at the right time.

Summer, 1976 premiered in 2023 at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre and enjoyed an acclaimed twice-extended run on Broadway in New York City. Since then the play had regional premieres at professional theatres across the North America and has been mounted by colleges, and community theatres.

Cast: 2 female

What people say:

"[A] bittersweet, comic memory play... a story of profound connection and awakening disquiet... sharply observant, too, and subtly, insistently feminist." — The New York Times

"Sensitive... a warm and beguiling memory play... The closer you look, and listen, and the more you reflect upon it, the deeper grow its rewards." — The Wall Street Journal

"Potently affirming... the story's modesty allows emotion and meaning to suddenly sneak up on you." — New York Post

"Quietly poignant... captures an experience that's as universal as it is inexplicable: a friendship that shouldn't work but does, and that should endure but doesn't." — Deadline

"The story that unspools is refreshingly small and intimate... Summer, 1976 highlights how simpler moments and interactions along one's timeline can still have a profound and long-lasting impact – much like the play itself." — Entertainment Weekly

"Gently affecting... this play about female friendship has a gently moving power." — The Daily Beast

"Intimate... its quiet revelations about the mysteries of life are powerful." — New York Daily News

About the Playwright:

David Auburn is an American playwright whose play Proof won the Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and was also adapted into a film. He has received the Helen Merrill Playwriting Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His work has been published in Harper's Magazine and The New England Review. He was a member of the Juilliard playwrighting program.