Cynthia Nixon on Bringing Wit to Broadway, Shaved Head and All

A Tony-winning actress, a Pulitzer Prize-winning play: That’s the magical combination headed to Broadway as Cynthia Nixon headlines the Main Stem debut of Margaret Edson’s 1998 drama Wit. Nixon will play Vivian Bearing, a prickly poetry professor who is diagnosed with stage four cancer, in Manhattan Theatre Club’s production, which is scheduled to begin performances at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre on January 4. The star and her director, MTC artistic director Lynne Meadow, met the press on December 13 to talk about the play—including Nixon shaving her head to play Professor Bearing—and why it deserves to be seen by Broadway audiences in 2012.