Patricia Richarson

A lot of us surely see summer as a chance for vacation and relaxation, but for actors it can be a busy time as theaters across the country come to life for another short season. Someone’s got to work to provide these entertainments after all.

For some actors, performing in Dennis, Mass., or Poughkeepsie, N.Y., might offer an opportunity to slip outside the box and take on a role that might be considered a stretch. The season might even provide, as it does this summer for Patricia Richardson and Ken Olin, for example, a chance to perform onstage after two decades or longer focusing on film and television. For Karen Allen, summer theater is providing a professional directing debut.

In New York City, where smaller theaters and the New York International Fringe Festival briefly steal the spotlight from Broadway during its annual post-Tony Award lull, artists can find ways to exercise new muscles.

During most of the 1990s the actress Patricia Richardson was supermom Jill Taylor on the sitcom “Home Improvement.” Her forthcoming gig playing the quintessential cougar and not-so-nice mom Mrs. Robinson in “The Graduate,” at the Cape Playhouse on Cape Cod, is a wholly different job.

It’s been at least 20 years since Richardson did a play, even though theater was her goal when she first came to New York in 1974. She then worked on and Off Broadway for the next 13 years. As she dips her toe back into theatrical waters now, Richardson wanted to do “a little play somewhere where it’s not in L.A. and not in New York,” she said.

“You go where you think it’s good for your work and your soul to go. I need to go someplace where I am reminded about why I wanted to act in the first place, and for me that’s the theater.”