Name Theresa Rebeck Role Playwright | Spouse Jess Lynn | |
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Occupation playwright, writer, novelist Books Spike heels, Dead Accounts, Loose knit Movies and TV shows Children Cooper Rebeck, Cleo Rebeck Plays Similar People Alexandra Gersten‑Vassilaros, Pitof, Scott Wittman, John Rogers, Marc Shaiman | ||
Playwright theresa rebeck hopes new play comes to playhouse in the park
Theresa Rebeck (born February 19, 1958) is an American playwright, television writer, and novelist. Her work has appeared on the Broadway and Off-Broadway stage, in film, and on television. Among her awards are the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award. In 2012, she received the Athena Film Festival Award for Excellence as a Playwright and Author of Films, Books, and Television.
Contents
- Playwright theresa rebeck hopes new play comes to playhouse in the park
- Premiere Playwright Theresa Rebeck THEATER All the Moving Parts
- Early life and education
- Career
- Television
- Plays
- Film
- Fiction
- Non Fiction
- Personal life
- References
Premiere - Playwright Theresa Rebeck | THEATER: All the Moving Parts
Early life and education
Rebeck was born in Kenwood, Ohio, and graduated from Cincinnati's Ursuline Academy in 1976. She earned her undergraduate degree at the University of Notre Dame in 1980, and followed that with three degrees from Brandeis University: an MA in 1983, a M.F.A. in Playwriting in 1986, and a Ph.D. in Victorian era melodrama, awarded in 1989.
Career
Past New York productions of her work include Mauritius on Broadway at the Biltmore Theatre in a Manhattan Theater Club production; The Scene, The Water’s Edge, Loose Knit, The Family of Mann and Spike Heels at Second Stage Theatre; Bad Dates and The Butterfly Collection at Playwrights Horizons; and View of the Dome at New York Theatre Workshop. Omnium Gatherum (co-written, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2003) was featured at the Humana Festival, and had a commercial run at the Variety Arts Theatre in 2003. Her play The Understudy, premiered at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in the summer of 2008, with a cast including Reg Rogers, Bradley Cooper and Kristen Johnson, and ran in New York at the Roundabout Theatre from October 2009 - January 2010, featuring Julie White, Justin Kirk, and Mark-Paul Gosselaar in the cast. The off-Broadway and regional theatre hit comedy premiered in 2015 at Artists Repertory Theatre in Portland. Rebeck was attached as a book writer for the new musical Ever After, based on the Drew Barrymore movie of the same name. That show was expected to start pre-Broadway tryouts in San Francisco in April 2009, but was postponed. Her play, Mauritius, ran at the Pasadena Playhouse in California from March 27 through April 26, 2009.
Her play Seminar played on Broadway starting in October 2011, and starred Alan Rickman. In May 2014 Seminar premiered in San Francisco at San Francisco Playhouse receiving outstanding reviews. Her play Fool premiers at the Alley Theatre, Houston, Texas, in February 2014.
In television, Rebeck has written for Dream On, Brooklyn Bridge, L.A. Law, American Dreamer, Maximum Bob, First Wave, and Third Watch. She has been a writer/producer for Canterbury’s Law, Smith, Law & Order: Criminal Intent and NYPD Blue. Through March 2012 she was one of the executive producers for the NBC musical series Smash, which she created, and which also debuted on February 6, 2012. Her produced feature film screenplays include Harriet the Spy, Gossip, and the independent feature Sunday on the Rocks.
Rebeck’s other publications include Free Fire Zone, a book of comedic essays about writing and show business. She has written for American Theatre magazine and has had excerpts of her plays published in the Harvard Review. Rebeck’s first novel, Three Girls and Their Brother, was published in 2008 by Random House/Shaye Areheart Books.
She has received awards including the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award, the Writers Guild of America Award for Episodic Drama, the Hispanic Images Imagen Award, and the Peabody Award, all for her work on NYPD Blue. She has won the National Theatre Conference Award (for The Family of Mann), and was awarded the William Inge New Voices Playwriting Award in 2003 for The Bells. Mauritius was originally produced at Boston’s Huntington Theatre, where it received the 2007 IRNE Award for Best New Play as well as the Elliot Norton Award. In 2010, Rebeck was honored with the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award for an American playwright in mid-career.
Rebeck is a board member of The Dramatists Guild and the Lark Play Development Center in New York City, and has taught at Brandeis University and Columbia University. In 2014 she will join the faculty of the University of Houston School of Theatre and Dance as a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Playwriting.
Her play Poor Behavior opened Off-Broadway at Primary Stages in August 2014. The play premiered at the Mark Taper Forum in 2011.
Rebeck is married, residing with her husband, Jess Lynn, and two children, Cooper and Cleo in Brooklyn. "Three Girls and their Brother" is dedicated to both Cooper and Cleo.
In an article in the New York Times in September 2007, she said that her plays were about "betrayal and treason and poor behavior. A lot of poor behavior."
Television
For her work on NYPD Blue, Rebeck was awarded a Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award and a Writers Guild of America award for Episodic Drama.
Plays
Her other work as a playwright includes:
Film
Her work as a screenwriter (or story writer) includes:
Fiction
Non-Fiction
Personal life
Rebeck lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn with her husband, Jess Lynn, and two children.