Playwright Theresa Rebeck

by Marla E. Schwartz

The New Theatre in Coral Gables {a Miami suburb} is a place where living playwrights can have their work produced in exceptional ways. 

Theresa Rebeck is one of these playwrights to have her

extraordinary work produced by this company.  The production of her play, Mauritius, about two half-sisters vying for the rights to a recently inherited and extremely valuable stamp collection, premiered not only to sold out houses last season, but was so successful that the run was extended.  People were literally staying in the lobby afterwards discussing this enthralling play.  To say that Rebeck has lots of fans in Miami is putting it lightly – they adore this woman!  It’s the incompatible relationship between the sisters in Mauritius who inadvertently meet up with a couple of con artists ensnaring them in their own web of deception, along with a fascinating ending, that has caused all the fuss.  It’s a story that keeps you thinking and on your toes the entire time.

 

If you haven’t seen a production of Mauritius yet – make sure that you see it somewhere, anywhere … as it’s as perfect as a play can get, written by an absolute genius.  A kind woman who would blush at being called a genius, but there’s no doubt about it – she’s an American gem!Rebeck’s plays have been produced all over the world.  Her play, Omnium Gatherum, co-written with Alexandra Gersten-Vassilaros, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2003.  The Understudy recently opened in New York at the Roundabout Theater.  It stars Justin Kirk (Uncle Andy, Weeds), Mark-Paul Gosselar, (Zack Morris, Saved by the Bell) and Julie White (Mitzi Huntley, Six Feet Under).

 

 

A native of Cincinnati, OH, and a graduate of Catholic University, she has an MFA in Playwriting and a PhD. in Victorian Melodrama, both from Brandeis University and lives in Brooklyn with her husband Jess Lynn and two children, Cooper and Cleo.  She has written for numerous television shows, such as: L.A. Law and Third Watch and has been a writer/producer for shows such as Law and Order: Criminal Intent and NYPD Blue.  For more information on all of her work and numerous awards, go to:  http://www.theresarebeck.com/.

 

Rebeck has been kind enough to answer a few questions about her work:

MES. Where did you come up with the idea for writing Mauritius?

 

TR. I had been interested in writing a play about a valuable object for several years—I actually wrote a few pages about a valuable bottle of wine at one point–and then I found some information about those stamps when I was just poking around some websites. I became really fascinated by them and continued to do some research. I loved the fact that those stamps were so small and beautiful and historic and yet so frail. It seemed quite mysterious to me. The play was first produced up in Boston, at the Huntington Theater, directed by the wonderful Rebecca Taichman. When it was a success there, I was invited by Manhattan Theater Club to bring it to their Broadway stage. After that it went into publication, with Samuel French, who handles the booking of further productions. I don’t know specifically how it came to Miami; {but} I’m glad to hear it was successful for them.

 

MES. Mauritius was your Broadway debut – how did your friends and family in your hometown react?

 

TR. My friends in Cincinnati were excited and a most of my family came to see it. They live very different lives. Sometimes I think they don’t really know what to make of me.

 

MES. Can you tell me if you have a specific writing schedule?

 

TR. Most people are impressed by the fact that I’m “prolific” but honestly I am not terribly interested in a lot of other things. So my “schedule” is that I write a lot.

 

MES. Do you have a particular writing style?

 

TR. Certainly. My work tends to fall in the area of heightened realism, I think. I write stories, with characters, which reveal themselves through action and dialogue. I believe in musical language and I’m not terribly interested in deconstructing the universe, at least not at this time.

 

MES. When did you first become interested in writing plays?

 

TR. I started writing plays in high school and college but there was no real container for it–there were no classes, where I was from; no one saying ‘let’s see what you have this week.’ it wasn’t until I got to graduate school that I started to get serious about it.

 

MES. Is it true that you got your first experience as a produced playwright while a graduate student at Brandeis University? If so, what was this experience like for you?

 

TR. Yes, I had plays done at Brandeis and also a couple of plays were done in Boston, at a little theater called Playwrights Platform. It really was a playwrights’ collective–we all chipped in and rented a space and produced ourselves, with actors who were friends. It was fantastic, frankly.

 

MES. Do you have any role models?

 

TR. I really admire Edward Albee for the way he survived a long period when he was not welcome in New York. I think he is edgy and interesting.  I like David Ives for the way he lives a complicated life as a writer and thinker. Marsha Norman and John Weidman are wonderful theater artists who have provided enormous psychological support to other artists, including me.  On the other side of the question allow me to say there are plenty of people who have been discouraging to me in ways that were painful. I think all but a few artists must have those people in their lives.

 

MES. Do you have any specific playwrights – those considered living legends, which you admire?

 

TR. I’m a little perplexed by the ‘living legend’ tag. Certainly I think Albee has earned it and Caryl Churchill as well.  I think the jury is still out on the rest of us.

 

MES. Congratulations on your position on the Board of the Dramatists Guild, Inc. as Treasurer. When did you first become involved with this organization?

 

TR. I became a member of the Dramatists Guild when I was in graduate school, twenty years ago. It is a superb organization and I think it does a tremendous job helping playwrights at all levels. I urge everyone who is interested in writing for the theater to join.

 

MES. Do you have any advice for young people who are just beginning to follow their dreams of becoming a playwright?

 

TR. Mostly I tell young writers that they should learn the basics–things like how to write character, how to achieve forward motion through action, listen for the music in your language, try to keep your stakes high. Also, I think everybody should learn how to FINISH.  So many writers get caught up in process and can’t finish a draft. You really have to learn how to get through a draft and rewrite it. So my advice is technical, yes: learn how to write. There are a lot of forces at work in the corporate side of things now, which muddy the waters.  A playwright is a singular voice – and necessary as such.

 

MES. When was the first time someone asked you for an autograph and how did it make you feel?

 

TR. I always find it a bit overwhelming to be asked for my autograph. I can’t imagine why anyone finds me interesting enough to want it. I particularly like those people who come up to me after plays and ask me to sign their programs. There are so many people who are really passionate about the theater and collecting memorabilia. I love those people.

 

MES.  Do you know that you’re on Wikipedia? Have you had a chance to look at it and make sure that the information is accurate?

 

TR. I did finally go on my Wikipedia page and straightened it out.  It had a lot of strange stuff on it, and I don’t know who wrote the first version of my page.  But it’s good now.

 

MES. The idea that playwriting is a dying art seems very sad to me – how do you respond to such an assertion?

 

TR. Well, I don’t think it’s dying but I do think that there are trends in the American theater right now that really aren’t helping very much. A lot of producers are running around saying things like “audiences don’t want new plays!” which I think is completely untrue. I think frankly audiences are pretty tired of revivals. And I think that they are hungering for a kind of contemporary American theater that speaks to their lives. So I think that producers need to start getting excited about new plays, and I also think that in general we all need to be working HARD to bring ticket prices down. I think that that is keeping people away. But my experience is when you lower ticket prices and do new plays, people show up in droves, and are interested in what theater offers them, which is so much richer and more immediate and frankly beautiful than most film and television. 

MES. You’ve worked with a great deal of celebrities, do any of these actors specifically ask you to write roles for them to portray?

 

TR. Let’s see. Obviously I worked a lot with Jimmy Smits and Dennis Franz when I was writing for NYPD Blue. I also did a movie a long time ago with Kate Hudson and James Marsden, although I am not sure they’d even remember me. In the theater I’ve worked with Kevin Bacon and Tony Goldwyn and Kate Burton. I did a couple of readings with Michael C. Hall, who plays Dexter on television, but we never made it to a full production. I did The Scene in New York with Tony Shaloub, Patricia Heaton, Anna Camp and Christopher Evan Welch. The person I really write for mostly is Julie White, who was in Grace Under Fire, Six Feet Under and currently she’s in the Transformer movies.

 

 

MES. Law & Order Criminal Intent is one of my favorite TV shows – can you explain your journey to becoming involved with this show?

 

TR. I wrote for Law and Order so long ago! I haven’t written much television since. Mostly I help out with pilots.  I might do it again someday, but right now my real interest is in theater and fiction.

 

MES. You co-wrote the play Omnium Gatherum with Gersten-Vassilaros, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2003 – congratulations, first of all. But I’m curious, how did this project come about and why did you decide to write the play with a collaborator? Can you describe how you worked together on this play – for example, did you have a set writing schedule? Where were you during the events of 9/11?

 

TR. I was at home, in Brooklyn, when the Towers were hit. I live very close to Flatbush Ave. We’re actually right across the river from Wall Street, about a mile further in. So we were out on the street, watching, when the towers came down. Shortly after that, the first people who had made it across the bridges marched straight up Flatbush. They were covered in ashes, and they were silent. It was really just devastating.

 

Those of us who were here in New York were obviously very overwhelmed by those events. I went to a meeting of playwrights shortly after the terrorist attack happened, and many people felt silenced by the event–they admitted that they didn’t know how to write, or what to write about, in a world that seemed so radically and tragically different, suddenly. I did not feel that way. But most of us at that time also didn’t want to be alone. It made sense to share the event of writing at that time. It really helped both Alex and I understand at least some of what had happened to us in this city. Basically we would come together, usually at Alex’s house and write and talk and share things we had been reading, and act out scenes with each other, and write them down. I was usually the one at the typewriter because I type faster than she does. Then we’d go off and work on our own, then come back together and try to fold the work into a coherent whole.

 

MES. Can you tell me about your first novel, Three Girls and Their Brother and why did you envision this story as a novel and not as a play or a movie?

 

TR. I’ve always loved and respected fiction–it was one of my life’s dreams, to write a novel. I finally had an idea that I thought would work well as fiction, and I decided to stop being a chicken about it, and just write it. Then it took me another year to find an agent and get it published. It is a very different world, fiction, as you might imagine. My second novel is coming out in May, and that was both more difficult and less difficult.

 

MES. What’s next?

 

TR. My second novel, Twelve Rooms With A View, comes out in England in November. Then it’s coming out here in the spring.

 

Theresa Rebeck, thank you very much for your time.

 

Ricky J. Martinez, Artistic Director and Eileen Suarez, Managing Director, of New Theatre are always on the search for new plays.  Check out its website, study it, and if you feel you have a new play that would match their production history, by all means submit it.  The website address is: www.new-theatre.org; play submission information is listed at the same web address.

 

Upcoming New Theatre productions include: In Development by David Caudle, October 8 – November 8, 2009; 26 Miles by Quiara Alegría Hudes, November 19 – December 20, 2009; The Hour of the Tiger by Sandra Riley, January 14 – February 14, 2010; Equus by Peter Shaffer, February 25 – March 28, 2010, and A New Play, TBA, April 8 – May 9, 2010.   For tickets and more information, call the box office at (305) 443-5909.

 

 

A native of Toledo, OH and a graduate of Kent State, Marla E. Schwartz has been a professional journalist since her teenage years and is a Senior Writer for Miami Living Magazine, and a freelance writer for CRAVINGS South Florida in Aventura, as well as Around Wellington Magazine and Lighthouse Point Magazine.  An avid photographer, her images have appeared in numerous Ohio publications, as well as in Miami Living, the Miami Herald, the Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel and the Palm Beach Post.  She has had numerous plays published and produced around the country.  Her short play, America’s Working? was originally read at First Stage in Los Angeles and in the same city produced at the Lone Star Ensemble.  It was then produced at Lynn University in Boca Raton, FL and then taken to an Off-Broadway playhouse by its producers Adam and Carrie Simpson.  Her piece, The Lunch Time Café, was a finalist at the Actor’s Theater in Louisville, Kentucky.    Feel free to contact her at: meschwartz1@hotmail.com.