V
ermont-based
playwright
Theresa Rebeck has had
four shows on Broadway.
TV and Film stars ranging from
Katie Holmes to Alan Rickman have
championed her work. She has been
nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and
named by Newsweek as one of their
“150 Fearless Women in the World.”
A regular presence at Dorset Theatre
Festival (DTF), this summer, Rebeck
directs her new play, Dig, at DTF. She
sat down recently with Producer/
Publisher Joshua Sherman to discuss
her work, her influences, her life in
Vermont, her newest play, and how to
fix a Broadway show from a gurney.
Sherman: Hi, Theresa. Welcome. First, let’s cover
the basics. Where were you born?
Rebeck: I was born in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Sherman: And how did you get interested in
theatre?
Rebeck: When I was young and going to
Catholic school, for $5 you could go to the
Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park and see the
student matinees three times a year. And so that’s
really what I remember - in terms of falling in love
with theatre - was going to those student matinees.
Sherman: Who are some of the playwrights that
inspired you?
Rebeck: Well, certainly, I was in love with Arthur
Miller from a very young age. He’s such a mighty
moralist and such a profound narrator of America,
the American culture and the American wounds
and I liked his, you know, his theatrical scope. I liked
Tennessee Williams a lot. And Moliere and
Shakespeare.
34
Sherman: Did you know (at such a young age) that
you wanted to be a playwright?
Rebeck: I sort of decided I was going to be a writer
before I even knew how to make a decision. And I
was thinking I would write fiction, write novels…
or stories or, you know, just be a writer in a kind of
amorphous, idealistic way - and in a very young way.
And then when I was in high school, I started acting
in plays. And I came home - I think I was 16 - and
I said to my mother, “I think I’d like to be a play-
wright.” And she went gray. You know, she looked
very shocked. In retrospect, I do think that was a
slightly insane thing to say. It seemed very logical
at the time. It doesn’t seem so logical anymore,
although I think it’s more common now for people
to decide to do this. You know, there just really was
no container for it. And playwrights didn’t come
from Cincinnati! … So, you know, the culture
has really changed around the whole idea of being a
playwright.
Sherman: You went to college at Notre Dame - but
pursued graduate school at Brandeis. That’s quite a
cultural shift.
Rebeck: It actually wasn’t. Other people have
observed that to me, but the fact is, they’re both
theologically-centric schools. At both places, you
know, there was a core curriculum that included
theology and philosophy, which I think actually
marks them as a different kind of education from a
state school.
Sherman: Where to after Brandeis?
Rebeck: I moved to New York.
Sherman: And how did you move forward in your
career once you got to New York?
Rebeck: It’s a perplexing question… This wonderful
man named Granville Burgess really liked [one of
my early plays], and he hunted me down and said,
“We should do a reading of this.” And then…some
things, sort of, started to add up, but in very
sporadic ways.
Sherman: And have you revisited any of those early
works?