Leslie Uggams and Yaya DaCosta are sharing a shaded park bench and talking to each other - something the two actresses never once do during the more than two hours that they share the stage in the Signature Theater Company's production of "The First Breeze of Summer."

In that revival of Leslie Lee's autobiographical play from 1975, both women play the same character - Lucretia - but at very different points in her life. Ms. DaCosta is a 17-year-old in the bewildering embrace of desire, while Ms. Uggams is her future self, tired and ailing but at peace.

The actresses' simultaneous presence onstage - something that was not done in the original version - underscores the tangle of naïveté and experience, actions and consequences that accumulates across time. The play depicts the generational tensions that pull at a close-knit, working-class African-American family.

Both performers - one an enduring star whose career spans 50 years, the other making her professional theatrical debut - have won plaudits for capturing this difficult blend. Ben Brantley in The New York Times praised Ms. Uggams's "subtle, contradiction-embracing portrayal" and Ms. DaCosta's "exquisite form."

He added that "the double portrait of Lucretia provided by Ms. Uggams and Ms. DaCosta remains sharp" through the end.

At recent performances standing-room-only patrons have lined the aisles like planters, and the run has been extended until Oct. 5.

As the two women, both dressed in black and white, sat side by side on a recent sun-washed afternoon, one could see the theme of change and continuity playing out in their own lives.

"She reminds me a lot of myself," Ms. Uggams said after Ms. DaCosta admitted that she was "slightly overwhelmed" by the prospect of sharing the stage with veterans like her. "My first play was 'Hallelujah, Baby!' I thought, 'Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.' "

Of course, by that point Ms. Uggams was already a television and singing star, having first appeared on the series "Beulah" in the early 1950s, at age 6. Her 1968 Tony Award for "Hallelujah, Baby!" was just one highlight in a career that includes her own television variety series (the first hosted by a black woman), concerts and a memorable performance as Kizzy in the groundbreaking 1977 mini-series "Roots."

Ms. DaCosta vividly remembers watching Ms. Uggams in that drama. "I thought: 'Wow; she's pretty. I want to be an actress like her.' "

For "First Breeze" she was able to study Ms. Uggams much more intensely, analyzing her gestures, expressions and rhythms so that her portrayal of the younger Lucretia would be believable.

"I tried to go and just watch," Ms. DaCosta said. Still, her own movements change from night to night, she said. "I don't like to get stuck in my choreography," she explained. If the character and emotions are right, "those movements come naturally."

What about the look on Lucretia's face? "That depends on who she's talking to - Milton? Harper?" Ms. DaCosta answered, referring to Lucretia's son and her suitor. She tilted her jewel-shaped face and opened her eyes wide before narrowing them. Instead of the modestly styled wave she wears in the play, Ms. DaCosta's hair fanned out to the left, and a coffee-cup-size oval earring swayed in her right ear. A short skirt had replaced the dowdy, ankle-length dresses that hang on her wispy frame when she is onstage.

Ms. DaCosta had taken time out from packing on this particular afternoon for the interview; she was in the midst of moving to a new apartment in Harlem, not far from her parents.

"Growing up in New York is hard," said Ms. DaCosta, who manages simultaneously to project shyness and savvy. It was at a boarding school in Massachusetts - which she attended before graduating from Brown University - that she settled into herself and began acting and writing plays more seriously. She prefers not to specify her age: "Let's just say I play 17 to 27."

The New York stage has turned out to be a testing ground for the up-and-coming as well as a refuge for older talent neglected by a youth-obsessed Hollywood. After her early successes, Ms. Uggams returned from California to New York - and to the very apartment her parents occupied on the West Side - 17 years ago.

In 1995 she was asked to join a revival of "Black Girl," an Off Broadway production of a play she already had a connection to: she had appeared in a 1972 film version as the ingénue. This time she was playing the part of Mama Rosie and was described as an "ageless diva" in reviews. That role led to one in "The Old Settler," which led to another in August Wilson's "King Hedley II," a performance that earned her a Tony nomination.

Accenting Ms. Uggams's simple white eyelet shirt and black pants was a black bracelet with "Stormy W" spelled out in diamonds (no one was tacky enough to ask if they were real), a sparkling advertisement for her next project, the musical "Stormy Weather." She plays Lena Horne in the show, which opens in January at the Pasadena Playhouse in California with an eye toward moving to Broadway. The songs are Ms. Horne's, but Ms. Uggams plans to do them in her own style.

She'll have a few weeks to rest up for that show after her current one closes. "First Breeze" is part of Signature's celebration of the early years of the Negro Ensemble Company, established in 1967 to give black artists more chances to showcase work. During this same period Ms. Uggams was riding a wave of new opportunities for black entertainers, particularly on television.

Decades later, though, it is often hard to find meaty, nonstereotypical roles for black women in any medium. Ms. Uggams said she also worried that productions of new plays by black authors would become even scarcer now that August Wilson is dead.

Ms. DaCosta agrees that available roles can sometimes be disappointing, but she is also encouraged by what she says is a trend of open casting, where a character's race or ethnicity is not specified. She added that even if a role was written for a white woman, it was "still possible to blow them away in the audition." Ms. Uggams nodded.

Ruben Santiago-Hudson said that as soon as he signed on to direct "First Breeze," he knew he wanted both Ms. Uggams and Ms. DaCosta for Lucretia. Ms. Uggams was already a familiar stage presence, seen most recently on Broadway in 2005 with James Earl Jones in "On Golden Pond," but Mr. Santiago-Hudson had met Ms. DaCosta only once, when he briefly appeared with her in a scene in John Sayles's 2007 movie, "Honeydripper."

"I asked, 'Where did you find her?' " he said.

Ms. DaCosta remembers the meeting. "People always say, 'You're doing good work, I'll keep you in mind,' " she said, "but you don't really think it's going to happen."

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