Amy Madigan, Bess Rous and Glenne Headly; Photo by Eric Schwabel

The three women gather in Geffen Playhouse artistic director Randall Arney’s office over a tray of fancy finger sandwiches — mostly vegetarian — and a plate of cupcakes, home-baked by Arney’s wife. Glenne Headly digs unceremoniously into the sandwiches. Amy Madigan goes straight for a cupcake. And Bess Rous curls catlike on the sofa, not yet tempted. The trio is appearing, along with Bill Pullman and Madigan’s husband Ed Harris, in the premiere of The Jacksonian, by Beth Henley, opening tonight.

The title refers to a Jackson, Mississippi, motel where Bill Perch (Harris) is staying while separated from his wife Susan (Madigan). Rous plays their daughter Rosy. Pullman and Headly play the motel’s bartender, Fred, and maid, Eva, respectively. The play has been set in several different years in the 1960s. The first version was in 1963 when Mississippi was still segregated. It bounced around in time a bit and is now set in 1964, which is the first year the state was desegregated.

Playwright Beth Henley

Although she now lives not far from the Geffen itself, Henley was born in Jackson and lived there during the turmoil of the early ’60s. In a January 2008 interview in the New York Sun, Henley said, “I’m trying to write a play now that takes place in a motel in 1965 in Jackson, and I think it’s going to deal with much more of the truth.” She added, “I have this desire to deal with the evil.”

“Mission accomplished!” Madigan crows, after this quotation is read aloud. The others agree. Madigan (A Lie of the Mind at the Taper, title role in Stevie Wants to Play the Blues at LATC, Oscar nominee for Twice in a Lifetime) sees this evil as something that seeps into everything. “The idea of Jackson, Mississippi, and the idea of the South is that in the soil itself, in the DNA of the place, there is so much blood, pain, racism, discrimination, death, deception.” Her character, Susan, has never traveled and knows nothing else. She ignores the evil around her under the cover of gentility, refusing to see the ugliness until it “comes up and smacks her in the face. And Susan still tries to push it aside.” Madigan hopes the audience finds some universality in that quality in her character.

Rous (recurring roles on Mad Men and Gossip Girl, recently seen in The How and the Why at the McCarter Theatre) equates evil with the pain Rosy feels. Because of her youth, Rous feels Rosy’s relationship with the pain is different from that of the adults in the play. “When you’re very young, you reach down to the bottom of your soul and try to stop the pain and turn the pain back and try to make pretend smiles,” Rous speaks softly but passionately. “I don’t want to say too much; I’d rather have the readers come see it.”

Ed Harris and Glenne Headly in “The Jacksonian”

Headly (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, two-time Emmy nominee, recently seen at the Geffen in a live radio reading of It’s a Wonderful Life) thinks her character is evil. In fact, the role has made her sick. She has nightmares, but that won’t stop her. “It would be really false to not show what people really talked like. It would be wrong not to show what was really happening.” Headly speaks vehemently about the resistance to desegregation in Mississippi, including the governor’s refusal to comply.

The women — and, indeed, the men, as well — have appeared in multiple incarnations of the play, although not all together until now. Headly and Madigan participated in two salon readings in Henley’s living room, in 2008 and 2009, with very close friends, including Harris and Pullman. Henley cast Madigan and Headly in their roles, and there has been no thought of switching.

Following these readings, Henley sought feedback from her friends. Headly asked Henley what she was trying to say in the play. Henley explained that she wanted people to understand that “Mississippi was hell for her — and for many people — in the 1960s,” Headly recalls. “She said, ‘There was so much hate.’ And I said, ‘Hate of what?’ And she said, ‘Hate of everything.’”

Bess Rous, Glenne Headly and Bill Pullman

Headly encouraged the playwright to add more of this hate into the play, because many people, herself included, don’t know what desegregation was really like. She is loath to take credit for the changes, but does admit that her character has become more and more racist as the play developed. “It wasn’t quite as intense when we first did it.”

“Glenne is really good at getting down, cutting through it and asking those kind of questions,” Madigan chimes in. “Which I appreciate. In rehearsal she is, too.”

Rous was in a staged reading at Ars Nova in New York City, spring 2009, and a week-long workshop and reading at New York Stage and Film/Vassar College Powerhouse Theater in August of the same year. Pullman played Rosy’s father in both. Rous says Rosy is deeper and richer that when the process began. “It is a glorious thing to see Rosy grow and change and deepen,” she says. Rosy’s monologues have changed the most. “The old monologues were very black and white, cut and dried, what you see is what you get,” Rous explains. As the language got more poetic, it was helpful to have had the more concrete versions first. “It’s important for me to honor where she’s [Henley] coming from and why she chose those words. She could have said anything, but she said those words specifically, so I stay on myself to honor her and welcome her vulnerability.”

“We are fortunate to have the same Rosy, which sometimes doesn’t happen,” says Madigan. “That’s in the DNA of the process — Bess has brought all that past with her.”

Amy Madigan, Bess Rous and Glenne Headly; Photo by Eric Schwabel

Headly doesn’t bring it up, but Madigan is eager to point out that “this production would not be happening if not for Glenne.” Headly pushed Henley to continue working on the play after the first reading, and kept asking until the playwright finally agreed to let her send the script to their mutual friend Robert Falls, artistic director of the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. They didn’t hear back right away. Henley was certain he hadn’t responded because he didn’t like the play. Headly assured her that Falls hadn’t read it yet. And she was right. In fact, Falls liked it so much he wanted to direct it himself.

Not only did she bring director Falls onto the project, Headly also brought the play to the Geffen and coordinated everyone’s schedules. She says she thought, “Ew, I don’t want to write all those letters and make those phone calls,” but realized that if it was going to happen, “Glenne, it’s going to have to be you, kid. And once I got into it, I used all the energy I do with my kid on the project.”

Bess Rous and Ed Harris

Why all this effort? “I wanted Beth to get the recognition she deserves,” Headly says. “People see her as a ‘lightweight,’ and I want them to see the depth and lyrical beauty of her work. Beth has a very complex side, and I think you see it in this play.” Madigan and Rous agree that Headly is this play’s champion.

Falls and Henley started working on the play before rehearsals began, and he encouraged her to participate and be vocal in rehearsal, a situation the actors find both unusual and helpful. “She’ll give us the metaphysical subtext when we’re all kind of going like this,” Madigan twists up her shoulders, arms, head, and face, “and it’s like, ohh that helps.” She relaxes. “Now I can get my head on right. It’s a delicate balance, I think. Beth really has a talent for knowing when to get in there and when to recede. It’s enormously helpful because it’s a very personal play.”

Originating a role creates a sort of pressure very different from the pressure of reprising a familiar role. “Well, they don’t compare your ass,” Madigan says, and the others laugh knowingly. “But you put more expectations on yourself to really get down there and use all those intelligent and soulful and creative sides of you. You don’t have another marker that’s put out there, so it’s freeing — a clean canvas. You have only the words with you. It’s very exciting, very risky in a glorious way.”

Bill Pullman and Amy Madigan

Headly also finds her role “very risky, because I find her beliefs so horrible. My character is meant to show what existed there [Jackson, Mississippi].” Because she sees Eva as an embodiment of hate rather than a complete person, Headly approaches the role differently than she usually would, in terms of what the character wants or needs. “This character is part of a social statement,” she explains. “Beth is showing something very dark.”

The Jacksonian is about very distinct things for these three actors. For Headly, it’s about showing a very personal point of view on life in Mississippi in the 1960s, and about the lengths that people will go to for their survival. “I think the play will inspire conversation. I think it’s very explosive, and I hope it inspires the audience to think about that time. It feels so far away, but in many ways it’s not. There are [two] people in Congress now who were serving then.”

The play is also about survival for Rous, but she frames it differently. She says that, for both Rosy and her, the play is about “the idea of being in a malignant environment and keeping my head above water and finding a way to breathe, no matter what.”

Madigan sees it a bit more broadly. “The personal is political and you can’t have something political unless it is personal; I believe that strongly. For me, personally, to work with Beth and to work with Ed — and we really like working together — and to work with these other actors is an extraordinary experience. There’s nothing like working on a play, and through that the political side comes out, and that’s rare.”

Amy Madigan and Ed Harris

The women are all active politically in their own lives. Rous was a committed volunteer on the Obama campaign. Headly is passionate about the environment. Madigan works in the political arm of the pro-choice movement. They wish there were more opportunities to express their convictions artistically. “To say that women’s reproductive health is in the worst state it’s ever been is putting it mildly, so I’ve been able to do some projects about that,” Madigan says. “But they just don’t come up — you have to self-initiate them.”

Headly pushed for the production of The Jacksonian because, “I just got tired of hearing about people saying they had things they wanted to do that couldn’t be done.” There is a pause, and you can hear the wheels turning, the gears falling into place. “Maybe in the future that’s what I should do, initiate the things I think are really important for the world.” Headly looks thoughtful. “It would be good if I did that.”

The Jacksonian, presented by Geffen Playhouse. Opens Feb. 15. Plays Tue-Fri 8 pm, Sat 3 pm and 8 pm, Sun 2 pm and 7 pm. Through March 25. Tickets: $94-99 through Mar.17; $94-139 for March 18-25 extension). Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater at the Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Avenue, Westwood. 310-208-5454. www.geffenplayhouse.com.

***All The Jacksonian production photos by Michael Lamont