Rebecca Taichman
“Indecent” Director Celebrates Jewish Women Onstage
When Rebecca Taichman, 47, won the 2017 Tony Award for best direction of a play for her work on “Indecent,” she was stunned. Still, she took the opportunity not just to thank those dear to her, but also to make a brief statement about ideals.
“This is a story about love in a perilous time and about speaking out and making art when… one is at great danger,” she said.
The play, for her, was personal in a way that was particularly resonant for Jewish audiences. At the first rehearsal for its Broadway transfer, she told a Forward reporter that “Indecent,” which is performed partially in Yiddish, was “a real mourner’s prayer for the loss of a language.”
She co-created the show with playwright Paula Vogel as an homage to Sholem Asch’s Yiddish play “God of Vengeance.”
In addition to “Indecent,” Taichman directed Sarah Ruhl’s “How To Transcend a Happy Marriage” at Lincoln Center, “The Clean House” at the Williamstown Theatre Festival and a revival of J.B. Priestley’s “Time and the Conways” on Broadway.
All in all, Taichman has positioned herself as one of the foremost interpreters of the contemporary work of Jewish women onstage.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
