While many students use their time in college to discover themselves and their passions, others begin their college years with a set career path in mind. The latter was the case for Theresa Rebeck M.A. '83, M.F.A. '86, Ph.D. '89, who calls herself "delusional" about the theater.
Rebeck spent much of the 1980s at Brandeis: she earned an M.A., an M.F.A. in Playwriting and a Ph.D. in Victorian-era melodrama, all from the University. She received her undergraduate degree in English from the University of Notre Dame.
Born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, Theresa Rebeck believes the theater "claimed me when I was young," she said. "It happened before I knew what was happening."
The sense of community at Brandeis, particularly in the theater, had a great impact on Rebeck. Her playwriting major required "crew commitments," meaning that every student in the program was expected to dedicate a number of hours each semester to running the light board, assisting backstage or creating costumes, regardless of the student's central talents or focus.
Rebeck spent most of her hours with the lighting crew and stage management. "I would ask any playwriting student to do this if I could design my own program, because it really taught us all about the physical life of the theater," Rebeck explained. She said being in the department was thrilling because the community felt like a "tribe."
The sense of unity continued to play a central role in Rebeck's first job in Hollywood: writing for the television show American Dreamer.
Director Sam Weisman, who was involved in the Brandeis Theater Arts department before Rebeck was a student, often visited and taught classes at the University. The chair of the department at the time, Prof. Michael Murray, passed along some of Rebeck's plays to Weisman, who helped her land the position in professional screenwriting.
Rebeck continued to benefit from Brandeis connections; alumni David Crane '79 and Marta Kauffman '78 hired Rebeck as a writer for the TV show Brooklyn Bridge in the early 1990s.
"Time works very differently in film and television because ... you can see it becomes vastly more psychological and human than you are prepared for," said Rebeck, who wrote for the TV show Smash this past year, starring Debra Messing '90, another graduate of the University. Of all her writing roles, however, she feels most at home as a playwright, as this form is how she imagines her stories first. "I think of language rising through character and [believe] that spoken word is the way that truth is conveyed."
Rebeck's current project is a Broadway show called Dead Accounts. She was asked to write this play about Cincinnati, her hometown, for Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. She wrote the show and had it produced in the past year.
Rebeck said she sees a lot of herself reflected in the play, in that "you grow up in Ohio and you're taught a certain kind of morality, and then you feel like moving into the wider world and then suddenly all the rules change."
Rebeck, who has also helped write and produce episodes of Law & Order: Criminal Intent, has more than her Brandeis education and relationships to thank for her success, however. She credits her continuous hard work for her achievements in Hollywood.
"I work really hard," she said. "You have to practice a lot more than you think you have to."
There were years during which she wrote all the time. "Sometimes I go through periods where I write less, but I never really stop writing," she said.
She still carries the sense of community and loyalty she appreciated while she was at Brandeis in her work with actors in her productions today. While she does not own a specific company, she said, "I have my people and we're very loyal to each other." So much so, that when "you don't end up in a situation where it works [because] they're doing a television show or you're working with a producer who really sees the part in a different way ... you really want to be working with the people you've been working with for [so long]," she said.
Rebeck taught at Brandeis not long after she was a student here herself. As Martin Halpern, professor emeritus of playwriting, was on sabbatical, Rebeck was called to substitute for him. She said that the role was more of a "big sister version" of a professor because she was only a few years older than the students in the program. As a teacher, she had students write 10-minute plays and produce the plays themselves to see how empowering it was to produce their own work.
Although she has taught at Columbia University several times over the years-most recently five years ago-it took a while for her to adjust to the life of an academic because of the separation between the actors, directors and playwrights. "It wasn't the kind of teaching that I was used to, writing in isolation from all the other elements," she said.
While she has experience writing in many different styles, Rebeck believes that the amount of control a writer has over her material changes with the medium. "[What you write is] always going to look different than it was in your head. It's going to start in your head, onto a stage into the bodies of these actors and in space and time," a feeling Rebeck calls "unbelievably thrilling."
Rebeck's intuition that she was meant to be a writer was cemented as she was completing her Ph.D. at Brandeis. She knew she had no interest in becoming an "academic."
"I was more interested in just telling stories," she said.