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What did it take to get Robert De Niro back to the stage after more than a decade?

De Niro will play a Cuban drug dealer in “Cuba and His Teddy Bear”--written by an unknown 26-year-old. “I could think of no better actor to play the role, so I simply asked for a meeting with him, and presented the project as one that would be a different sort of challenge,” said Bill Hart, literary manager at Joseph Papp’s Public Theater. “He liked the script, met with the playwright, read the play with other actors, and then, in a matter of days, agreed to do it.”

Hart will direct De Niro, Ralph Macchio and Burt Young in Reinaldo Povod’s play, which revolves around De Niro’s efforts to deal both with the drug world of New York’s Lower East Side and with his precocious son (Macchio). Rehearsals are scheduled to begin March 15, with the opening a month later for an eight-week run at the 100-seat theater.