Fresh off his Tony nomination for Mother Play, Jim Parsons is back on Broadway in Our Town. So, does he not like taking a break? “Until [Big Bang Theory] wrapped in 2019, I did not really know what it was to take a break that was not only extended, but also uncertain.” The reason for back-to-back shows—besides theater being “more alive for me now as it…ever has been”—is that “within days of agreeing to one, another came,” and, “I felt very strongly that I wanted to do both.” Parsons plays the stage manager in Our Town, guiding the audience through “one of the better-known plays in the entire canon of theater, and with a cast of 28.” “I said it to Kenny [Leon], the director, in rehearsal the other day, ‘This is the first time in a long time that I’ve worked on something and I thought I could see not really getting tired of [it].'” Parsons knows many will always see Big Bang Theory‘s Sheldon in his performances, and he’s fine with that, because the sitcom “undoubtedly offered me more opportunities as an actor and as a human than without it, there’s just no doubt about it.”

You’re going straight from a Tony-nominated performance in Mother Play to Our Town. Do you not like relaxing? Taking time off?

No, I do enjoy relaxing. It’s very funny, because when I did the TV show over 12 years, I sprinkled in a lot of work on the summers, and so the overlap was kind of crazy. It was always enjoyable, because the things I would do, whether it was a lot of theater, a couple of films, or whatever, the things I would do were so different than the TV show that you didn’t feel you were using the same muscles the entire 12 months of the year. But until our show wrapped in 2019, I did not really know what it was to take a break that was not only extended, but also uncertain. Like even if I had a break from our show, if I just took a summer off, I knew that I had three months off, and I knew I was going back into [the show], I knew the character, I knew the people I was going to play with, or whatever. Since then, and especially around with COVID, I’ve really gotten the experience of what it is to have time off that floats in kind of purgatory. I’ve enjoyed it so far. But the reason that these are so close together is because they came within weeks of each other. I had to get a lot of people to very kindly play ball with rescheduling and moving things so that I could do both, because within days of agreeing to one another came and they were suddenly in a weird conflict. But I felt very strongly that I wanted to do both. Because of that, I’ve had about seven weeks off between Mother Play and Our Town.

The experiences are so different. I mean, first off, Mother Play was a new play. And also it was only three people. So to jump to Our Town, which is one of the better known plays in the entire canon of theater, and with a cast of 28, it’s such a vastly different experience. The only thing in common is the most wonderful thing, which is time spent in a rehearsal room, to get to be with everybody and explore something, it’s heaven. It’s become more important to me the older I’ve gotten. Like, I’ve realized that’s more important to me than performance. Everyone’s like, “Would you quit saying that? You’re gonna jinx it…we’d like to open.”