Daryl Roth has been producing on Broadway since 1991. Over the past 35 years, Roth has shepherded such impactful works as “Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992,” “Caroline, or Change” and “Indecent,” as well as Tony Award-winning productions of “The Normal Heart,” “Clybourne Park” and “A Raisin in the Sun.” Now, she’s transferred Bess Wohl’s “Liberation” after its successful Off-Broadway run with Roundabout Theatre Company earlier this year. Roth is one of four lead producers on the mounting, alongside Jenny Gersten, Eva Price and Rachel Sussman.
Here, Roth shares why she believed “Liberation” needed to move to Broadway, what attracted her to the play in the first place and why she chose to partner with these women.
Broadway News: When and how did the play first come across your desk?
Daryl Roth: Well, it actually didn’t come across my desk. I went to see it at the Laura Pels [Off-Broadway]. I went to see it early on, and I just fell in love with everything about it. It felt to me like it was the next chapter after doing [the play “Gloria: A Life” about] Gloria Steinem. It’s in my wheelhouse. Not to mention, I was around in the ’70s.
I felt so comforted by seeing these women go through, in some ways, what I feel like my generation is going through and knowing that they all survived. They all had lives. Having lived through it, what was your experience of watching it?
Roth: Well, my experience was bittersweet, actually, because I remember being really involved as a young married person in the ’70s. I felt very much akin to what people were talking about — I wanted to keep working, and I had just gotten married, and then I had two babies. But I kept working, managing it and balancing it. And I felt very much supported, even just spiritually by what women were doing and saying we could do. That’s the sweet part. The bitter part is what’s going on in our world now. For my daughter and her three daughters, I feel very anxious and upset and concerned that everything that was being fought for is being pushed back. And so it was bittersweet. But I love the cast. I love the story that was being told.
To see the play Off-Broadway, to know that subject-wise “it’s necessary” is one thing. To say “We’re going to bring it to a Broadway house” and “It’s viable” is another. What makes it viable for Broadway? Or, how are you marketing it so that it is viable?
Roth: Well, in all candor, it’s a risky business altogether. It’s very risky [on] another level to do a play, risky [on] another level to do a play with just magnificent, wonderful actors that don’t happen to be television or movie stars. And yet, I felt the same way when I did the revival of “The Normal Heart.” The main impetus for me to do this was to let people of a younger generation know whose shoulders they stand on. That was the case for “The Normal Heart” and why I really felt compelled to do it. When I saw “Liberation,” I thought, “Many young women don’t understand whose shoulders they stand on.”
