Players Workshop presents Summer 1976 by David Auburn a concert reading
Directed by Richard Hochberg
Featuring Clara Dunham & Desiree Duncan
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Summer, 1976: Wed., Oct. 8, 2025, 6pm
Summer, 1976: Thurs., Oct. 9, 2025, 6pm
Summer, 1976: Fri., Oct. 10, 2025, 6pm
Summer, 1976: Sat., Oct. 11, 2025, 6pm
In the summer of 1976, the year of the American bicentennial, two young women in Columbus, Ohio, meet through a babysitting co-op. Each has a five-year-old daughter. Diana is an art professor, and Alice is a housewife and free spirit – a “sleepy-eyed hippie,” in Diana’s sneering assessment. Their first meeting is inauspicious – “I sort of immediately hated her,” Alice recalls of Diana. But their daughters become instant friends, and after a while, the two women bond.
It takes time for both women to discover that neither is exactly what she had seemed on first meeting. Alice learns that Diana is a single mother not as a result of death or divorce, but because she neglected to wear her diaphragm on a casual date. “I couldn’t quite square it,” Alice remembers thinking, “this meticulous, very controlled person, having a baby like that, accidentally and randomly. It made me think – this is obvious now but it seemed like a big revelation at the time – that people aren’t just one thing.”
David Auburn’s wise and witty two-character play Summer, 1976 had a limited run on Broadway two years ago, and met with near-universal acclaim. Summer, 1976 is a memory play, set some three decades after the summer of the title, as both women, now older, with grown-up daughters, look back on their improbable friendship. Auburn, the Pulitzer and Tony-winning author of Proof, is a master of the two-hander, as demonstrated in plays such as Fifth Planet, Two Dads, An Upset and Amateurs – and in Summer, 1976, a 90-minute gem in one act, which is about to make its San Miguel premiere.
On October 8, 9, 10 and 11 (Wednesday through Saturday), at 6pm, Players Workshop will stage four performances of Summer, 1976 at the Santa Ana Theatre in the Biblioteca, Relox 50. The format is concert reading. Two of San Miguel’s best actors, Clara Dunham and Desiree Duncan, have been cast as the unlikely friends. The director, Richard Hochberg, most recently directed Art, also at the Santa Ana.
Dedicated to the Quality Production of Theatre in San Miguel Allende since 1982 Players Workshop is committed to presenting professional theatrical events that entertain, inspire thought, arouse imagination, educate and encourage dialogue. Supporting cutting edge productions of both new work and classic plays that appeal to and attract a diverse community such as the one in San Miguel. We wish to thank all of those supporters, sponsors, volunteers and artists who’ve made Players Workshop the “go-to” theater company in SMA.
