Actress Holland Taylor remembers when she’d heard the news that the legendary late governor of Texas, Ann Richards, died in 2006. “I was swept up…with a really consuming mourning that was completely illogical, given that I didn’t know her,” she told WQXR’s Elliott Forrest when the two sat down to discuss her new play about Richards. “It was very personal. I was inconsolable.”
Holland later realized what she, and the country, had been mourning. “How could that voice not be in my life anymore?” she remembered thinking. “I wanted to do something with what I felt…I wanted to find out why she had such a powerful effect on me and on, as far as I could see, everyone who encountered her.”
The Emmy Award-winning actress came to The Greene Space on January 22 to give us a behind-the-scenes look at “Ann,” the new play that emerged from that personal search. Written and performed by Taylor (“Two and a Half Men”), the play is an intimate, no-holds-barred portrait of Richards – a complex, colorful and captivating character bigger than the state from which she hailed. It opens in March at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater.
Watch an excerpt below: