As a closeted kid growing up in Moscow, Idaho, gay playwright Samuel D. Hunter remembers watching the ABC sitcom Roseanne. Hunter particularly enjoyed Laurie Metcalf’s Emmy Award-winning performance as Aunt Jackie in the series.
“I loved her,” Hunter said. “I remember being a 10-year-old and going, ‘She’s really good.’”
So, imagine Hunter’s surprise when he received word from his agent during the COVID-19 pandemic that Tony Award-winner Metcalf (Three Tall Women, A Doll’s House, Part 2)and Tony Award-winning director Joe Mantello (Assassins, Take Me Out) were interested in him writing a play for them at Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago.
As a New York-based playwright since his time studying at Julliard, Hunter had seen many of Metcalf’s critically acclaimed performances on Broadway and off. “If I could name one person on earth for whom I would want to write something, it would be Laurie,” Hunter said. “She just fits my sensibility perfectly.”
Hunter, Metcalf and Mantello are now in the midst of previews for Steppenwolf’s world premiere of Little Bear Ridge Road, which was extended an extra two weeks to Aug. 4 before performances even began. The occasion marks Hunter’s Steppenwolf debut, while it’s the first return for longtime ensemble member Metcalf since the bleak comedy Detroit in 2010. Mantello’s Steppenwolf debut was in 2014 directing the pre-Broadway run of Airline Highway (both plays are by Lisa D’Amour).
Hunter is likely best-known for his 2012 play The Whale, an Idaho-set drama about a morbidly obese gay widower who has been slowly eating himself to death. Brendan Fraser won an Academy Award for Best Actor in director Darren Aronofsky’s 2022 film version of The Whale, which featured an adapted screenplay by Hunter.
But for die-hard theater fans, Hunter is also known for a large body of plays set in his home state, like Pocatello, Greater Clements and A Bright New Boise. Much of Hunter’s work features characters who are gay, or struggling with their faith in a modern world, or both.
“My family goes really far back in northern Idaho where I’m from—my great-great grandfather homesteaded there and was the first postmaster of my hometown,” Hunter said. “I started writing plays set in Idaho early on, just because I felt like I knew the landscape and it was a nice container for the ideas that I wanted to get at—like people who are not on the winning end of American life.”
Hunter noted that Google Maps will indeed pick up the remote and rural thoroughfare located about 12 miles outside of the town of Troy, Idaho, that gives Little Bear Ridge Road its name. This tragic and comic play concerns a gay young man (Micah Stock) and his family-estranged aunt (Metcalf), who reunite following the death of his drug-addicted father.
“They both find this kind of point of crisis that they’re sharing together and it’s set throughout the course of the pandemic,” Hunter said. “They talk a lot in the play about how their family—much like mine—extended through the history of that region.”
Like much of his past work, Hunter in Little Bear Ridge Road explores how Idahoans reflect on their pioneering history while also living amid so many the big-box retail and restaurant chains.
“In so many of these smaller western towns, the downtown has rotted to the core,” Hunter said. “There are Wal-Marts and Olive Gardens on the periphery, and that’s where the town exists now.”
Hunter said it’s been wonderful to have a personal friend like Stock to star in Little Bear Ridge Road, and to have a great actor/director like Mantello to helm this Steppenwolf production. But it’s Hunter’s chance to write for such a towering TV, film and stage star like Metcalf that has one of the most exciting challenges.
“I felt the best possible version of this was that I write a script that was in service of Laurie,” Hunter said. “Whenever I think about Laurie, it’s ‘A,’ I think about how funny she is, and ‘B,’ I think she’s so great at tragedy and how she’s so good about putting those same things right next to each other.”
Hunter is also very humbled that his debut at Steppenwolf will be a continuation of his work that has been and will be seen on Chicago stages. For example, Hunter said he finalized his published script of The Whale following its 2013 production at Victory Gardens Theater. And Hunter is keen to see how Steep Theatre will stage the Chicago premiere of his critically acclaimed 2022 off-Broadway drama A Case for the Existence of God this summer.
“I got my master’s degree at the University of Iowa—that’s where I met my husband—and we would take trips to Chicago to just to see plays,” said Hunter, pinpointing a lasting memory of seeing playwright and actor Tracy Letts star in Steppenwolf’s 2006 production of Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman.
“I think in another world or another life, we would have ended up in Chicago,” Hunter said. “We love Chicago and the theater in Chicago.”
The world premiere of Little Bear Ridge Road continues in previews with a press opening Sunday, June 23, at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, 1650 N. Halsted St. Regular run performances are 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, 3 and 7 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday through Aug. 4. Additional performances are at 7:30 p.m. Sundays, July 28 and Aug. 4, since there will be no performances on June 18, July 4 or July 16. The performance on Tuesday, July 10, is at 2 p.m. with no evening show. Tickets are $20-$168. Call 312-335-1650 or visit Steppenwolf.org.
Steep Theatre’s Chicago premiere of A Case for the Existence of God plays at The Edge Off Broadway, 1133 W. Catalpa Ave. Previews begin July 13 with a press opening on July 19. Regular run performances are 7:30 p.m. Thursday through Saturday through Aug. 25. Tickets are $30-$40. Call 773-649-3186 or visit steeptheatre.com.