Seller: We have some.

But does it matter to you that Hurlyburly will not be eligible now that it is not on Broadway?

Seller: It matters to people’s hearts, and we can’t speak to that. But the only Tony that matters for marketing and ticket selling is the Tony for best musical, and this is not a musical. This is not a new play. Winning a Tony for best revival is meaningless—in a commercial sense.

Why is it important to have a star like Hawke in the production? Did you take any flak for that?

Seller: We’re not the best people to answer that question because it hasn’t been part of our careers at this point. I would just encourage you to see this production, because though it does have these young stars in it, their performances are extraordinary, and every single one of them was a stage performer before being a movie star. Ethan Hawke started at Young Playwrights festival in the early ’80s. The man has extraordinary stage chops. This is not a Hollywood guy who is coming to try his hand. Ethan did Henry IV at Lincoln Center last year.

McCollum: And he came to the play and really loved it. It’s not like we cynically cast him.

Seller: We decided the best way to give this play further life was to take it to our theater, because it’s a good match between the values of the play and the values of our theater. We thought, “This is the ideal play to open our theater.” It says everything we want to say. We want to do plays by America’s—and the world’s—best playwrights, with its best actors who have enough commercial potential to sell 500 seats a night. We’re not interested in selling 100 seats a night. We can’t exist. We have to sell 4,000 seats a week. And this play has artistic credibility and commercial potential, and that’s what makes it so perfect for our theater.

Why is it so difficult for many to make money in the theater?

McCollum: First of all, you have to have an instinct and you have to understand human behavior. To get someone to go to the theater . . . there are a lot of things you need to convince them to do. You’re dealing with the image of a typical theatergoer as a 55-year-old woman. We don’t think that way. We’re trying to get our friends to go to the theater, and I still feel like I’m 28.

Seller: Jonathan Larson, who wrote Rent, taught us a great deal through his friendship and his comments as a writer. He’d say, “I love Broadway, but they’re not writing stories for us there.”

McCollum: But Broadway doesn’t have to be our father’s Oldsmobile. It’s ours to invent, and we need to create the stories that will attract young people to the theater.