Theresa Rebeck
(Playwright) is a prolific writer with success spanning theater, television, film, and literature. She has been named one of the 150 Fearless Women in the World by Newsweek and The New York Times has referred to her as “one of her generation’s major talents.”
She is best known for her plays Seminar and Mauritius, which both premiered on Broadway, and her earlier works Spike Heels, Bad Dates and Omnium Gatherum (Pulitzer Finalist, co-written with Alex Gersten) and her TV show “Smash.”
Additional theater credits include: Downstairs (Dorset Theatre Festival); Dead Accounts (Music Box Theatre); The Scene, The Water’s Edge, Loose Knit, and The Family of Mann (Second Stage); Seared (San Francisco Playhouse); The Nest (Denver Center for the Performing Arts); The Way of the World (Dorset Theatre Festival); Poor Behavior (Mark Taper Forum, Primary Stages); The Butterfly Collection and Our House (Playwrights Horizons); The Understudy (Roundabout Theatre Company); and View of the Dome (New York Theatre Workshop). Upcoming projects: Way of the World at the Folger Theatre. Theresa and composer Josh Schmidt are adapting the RKO film Dance, Girl, Dance as a stage musical, and she has created a stage adaptation of the fable Stone Soup with John Weidman. She is currently under commission by Roundabout Theater Company, La Jolla Playhouse and South Coast Rep.
Theresa adapted and directed the film version of Poor Behavior and directed her original screenplay for Trouble, starring Anjelica Huston and Bill Pullman, which premiered at the 2017 Seattle Film Festival. Other films include Harriet the Spy, Gossip, and the independent features Sunday on the Rocks and Seducing Charlie Barker, an adaptation of her play, The Scene. In addition to “Smash”, Ms. Rebeck has writing and producing credits for television projects including “Dream On”, “Brooklyn Bridge”, “L.A. Law”, “American Dreamer”, “Maximum Bob”, “First Wave”, “Third Watch”, “Canterbury’s Law”, “Smith”, “Law and Order: Criminal Intent” and “NYPD Blue”.
All of Ms. Rebeck’s past produced plays are published by Smith and Kraus as Theresa Rebeck: Complete Plays, Volumes I, II III, and IV and are available from Samuel French or Playscripts. Ms. Rebeck’s other publications are 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. Ms. Rebeck’s first two novels, Three Girls and Their Brother and Twelve Rooms With A View, are published by Random House/Shaye Areheart Books in April 2008. Her most recent book, I’m Glad About You, was released to rave reviews at the top of 2016 and is published by Putnam.
Theresa has been honored to receive the National Theatre Conference Award, the William Inge New Voices Playwriting Award, PEN/Laura Pels Foundation Award, the Athena Film Festival Award, an Alex Award, a Lilly Award, an IRNE Award for Best New Play, an Eliot Norton Award, the Mystery Writer’s of America’s Edgar Award, the Writer’s Guild of America award for Episodic Drama, the Hispanic Images Imagen Award, and the Peabody. Ms. Rebeck is originally from Cincinnati and holds an MFA in Playwriting and a PhD. in Victorian Melodrama, both from Brandeis University. She is a proud board member of PEN America and the Dramatists Guild, a Contributing Editor to the Harvard Review, an Associate Artist of the Roundabout Theatre Company, a Playwright Adviser and Board Member of the LARK, and has taught at Brandeis University and Columbia University. She is currently holds the Lyndall Finley Wortham Chair in the Performing Arts at University of Houston. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children.