Katie Holmes, Jim Parsons, Zoey Deutch, Ephraim Sykes, Richard Thomas and director Kenny Leon, along with the rest of company of the new Broadway revival of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town,” held their first reading in MacDowell’s Bond Hall.

The cast and company came seeking the inspiration that drove Wilder, a nine-time fellow at MacDowell, as he completed the Pulitzer Prize-winning work in MacDowell’s Veltin Studio, setting the play in Grover’s Corners, a fictional town inspired by Peterborough.

“It does mean something to see where he wrote the play,” Julie Halston, who is playing Mrs. Soames in the production, told Town & Country. “He’d been to [MacDowell] nine times, and he finished the play in this little studio cottage, and it reminded all of us that art is not easy. Art takes work, art takes reflection. I’m about as spiritual as my coffee cup, but it was very spiritual. It was when we were in a different environment, smelling that air, seeing the birds, hearing those sounds that we realized, “Oh, this is what Wilder is asking us to pay attention to.”

The revival of “Our Town” is set to begin performances at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on Sept. 17.