Former Star Trek: Enterprise lead actor Scott Bakula is appearing this month in the new play The Quality of Life.

The Quality Of Life features Bakula as Bill, the husband in a conservative Christian midwest couple who decide to visit their left-leaning cousins, Jeannette and Neil. Bill and his wife Dinah are still coping with the recent loss of their daughter, while Jeanette and Neil are forced to live in a tent on the scorced site of their former home, which they recently lost in a wildfire. The play was written for the Geffen Playhouse by Jane Anderson, and features Dennis Boutsikaris, Laurie Metcalf and JoBeth Williams alongside Bakula.

In late September, theatre site Backstage.com talked to Bakula and his co-actors about the play. "The great joy of the process is that it's an original piece," he said. "Yesterday we were talking about cutting scenes. And if you're not doing something original, you don't experience that. And finding stuff that works and stuff that doesn't work. And creating a role and creating relationships is the ultimate, as great as it is to do classics--nobody ever asks me to do them, but as great as I imagine them to be. But there's nothing like coming up and spending the rehearsal time finding stuff for the first time. And nobody's in the room, saying, "But when we were in Florida, we did it this way." That will happen after this production, because the next people to do the show--if it's not us [silently sobs]--they'll hear about what we did. And this is just the only time that this moment ever exists. And that's the best part of it, for me, for us, creatively speaking."

Even though Bakula spent most of his career on television shows such as Quantum Leap and Enterprise, he noted that these days, he recommends young actors to try their hand at the theatre, as it's so much harder to get into television. "[The] reality is that the TV landscape, especially, has changed because the guest stars on TV shows are all people with names now. The networks want people that bring something they can use for publicity. When I got an opportunity to be a guest star on Designing Women, when I came out here--I wouldn't get that opportunity today. If they could, they'd go through 10 other guys first, hoping they could get one of those guys. I don't mean to be discouraging, but that's the reality. It's harder to do. The world is extremely challenging to young people right now, in their 20s. And I know because I have a kid in her 20s. It is a very hard world to be 20 in right now. If you can do theatre, it can translate to anything else."

For more from Bakula, head over to Backstage.com for the full interview. The Quality of Life will be playing through November 18 at the Geffen Playhouse. More information about the play, including details on how to book tickets, can be found at the Geffen Playhouse.

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