TDF Stages

Samuel D. Hunter finally arrives on the Main Stem with Little Bear Ridge Road starring Laurie Metcalf and Micah Stock

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In Little Bear Ridge Road, a writer named Ethan (Micah Stock) has stopped writing. As a graduate student, he authored stories based on his own life. When he reconnects with his aunt Sarah (two-time Tony winner Laurie Metcalf), he explains that he put down his pen because "I didn't like my main characters." That simple, devastating admission starts Ethan on a tentative journey toward self-acceptance as he gradually opens up to Sarah under the blue light of her living-room TV, which is constantly on.

Running at the Booth Theatre through February 15, 2026, Little Bear Ridge Road marks the Broadway debut of Samuel D. Hunter, a playwright whose many award-winning works (Grangeville, Greater Clements, The Whale, which was turned into a celebrated movie) all take place in his home state of Idaho, sort of his own Spud State Theatrical Universe. Writer's block may seem like an unusual subject for an artist as prolific as Hunter, who's penned 19 plays in 16 years. But Ethan and Hunter share an interest in autofiction. "The personal place is always a starting point for me," Hunter says, adding that while he's never "airlifted a person or a direct situation out of my life and plopped it into a play," autobiographical elements permeate his work.

This production of Little Bear Ridge Road had its acclaimed world premiere last year at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company, where Metcalf has been a member of the acting ensemble for half a century. The play was commissioned by Metcalf and her frequent collaborator Joe Mantello; this marks their seventh Broadway show together (if you include the ill-fated 2020 revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, which never opened due to COVID-19). Fans of his plays, the duo reached out to Hunter through an agent about crafting a new piece just for them. Hunter says working with them was "a dream scenario," and he was especially excited to write for Metcalf. "I just love Laurie so much and she fits my sensibilities so perfectly."

He vividly recalls their first meeting, which took place in the lobby of NYC's Signature Theatre as Hunter was working on the 2023 revival of his play A Bright New Boise. He pitched an offbeat idea: a play about watching television. "I was nervous to frame it that way, but to their credit, they heard me out," he recalls. The concept would grow, but to Hunter, the "anesthetizing glow of a screen" is baked into the tale.

Hunter is interested in screens' capacity to distract, numb and comfort. Those impulses felt particularly acute during the pandemic shutdown, which is why he set Little Bear Ridge Road in the wake of it as these characters try to tear themselves away from screens. "As a play, it is about ultimately ripping ourselves into real human relationships," he says. "The thing that I think [Sarah] is continually trying to do is just rip [Ethan] into real life."

Ethan's emotional journey toward emotional availability is one Hunter knows well. "Northern Idaho is not a place where people express their emotions extremely freely," he admits. "It's a little pent-up over there." So when he met his husband's Irish Catholic family, he was "flabbergasted" by how candidly they expressed their emotions. "I'd just never encountered something like that!"

Micah Stock, who's known Hunter for a decade, puts a finer point on it. "It's curious that in Ethan, Sam writes a writer who is trying to take control of his own narrative by writing autofiction," he explains. "He might scoff at this, but I sort of think that's Sam." Perhaps, Stock suggests, Hunter writes such rich depictions of Idaho and its people to explore other paths his life might have taken. Though he acknowledges Ethan isn't an "exact avatar," Stock says the character's outlook as a writer and his romance with a brilliant, empathetic young man named James (John Drea) reflect aspects of his beloved friend.

"All of my plays have bits and pieces of myself in them," Hunter concedes though he resists the label of autofiction. In the rehearsal room, he tries to let go of his personal connection to his work, trusting actors like Stock to make the material their own.

Echoing something director Jack Serio said about the characters in Hunter's play Grangeville moving by "inches," he notes that tiny shifts can have a seismic effect. His plays have always revolved around small moments that accumulate into change and grace. "When I think back to the sort of catharsis I've had in my life," he says, "be it surrounding forgiveness or just getting closer to somebody, it's never some big Lifetime movie emotional explosion. It's always just inches."

Now, after more than a decade working Off Broadway and a slew of accolades, including an Obie Award, a Drama Desk Award and a MacArthur Fellowship, Hunter has arrived on commercial theatre's main stage. While he admits that the scale of Broadway is "definitely overwhelming," he says the work remains "the same." His plays are "different chapters in the same book; they all kind of resonate with one another." Still, each play reflects small changes. Little Bear Ridge Road gives audiences—and its author—a chance to move toward something new, even if just by a few impactful inches.

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