Theresa Rebeck Books In Order

Three Girls and Their Brother

Now that it’s all over, everybody is saying it was the picture that stupid picture was behind every disaster…
.

They may be the granddaughters of a famous literary critic, but what really starts it all is Daria, Polly, and Amelia Heller s stunning red hair. Out of the blue one day, The New Yorker calls and says that they want to feature the girls in a glamorous spread shot by a world famous photographer, and before long these three beautiful nobodies from Brooklyn have been proclaimed the new It girls.

But with no parental guidance Mom s a former beauty queen living vicariously through her daughters, and Dad is nowhere to be found the three girls find themselves easy prey for the sharks and piranhas of show business. Posing in every hot fashion magazine, tangling with snarling fashonistas and soulless agents, skipping school and hitting A list parties, the sisters are caught up in a whirlwind rise to fame that quickly spirals out of control.

When Amelia, the youngest of the three who never really wanted to be a model in the first place appears in an Off Broadway play, the balance of power shifts, all the pent up resentment and pressure comes to a head, and the girls quiet, neglected brother reaches a critical point of virtual breakdown. And against the odds, even as the struggle for fame threatens to tear the family apart, the Hellers begin to see that despite the jealousy, greed, and uncertainty that have come to define their relationships, in the celebrity world of viciousness and betrayal, all they really have is one another.

Narrated in four parts, from the perspective of each sibling, Three Girls and Their Brother is a sharp, perceptive, and brilliantly written debut novel from an acclaimed playwright.

Twelve Rooms with a View

How would it feel to go overnight from living in a trailer park to a twelve room apartment overlooking Central Park in a landmark Victorian building? This is what happens to housecleaner Tina Finn, who, with her sisters, Alison and Lucy, suddenly comes into possession of the Livingston Mansion Apartment at the Edgewood. The Finn sisters inherit the $11 million property from their estranged alcoholic mother, but they aren t the only siblings vying for it. Their mother’s wealthy second husband, Bill who died just three weeks before Tina s mother has two sons. And they are furious at the thought of losing the apartment that s been in their family for generations. Tina moves into the nearly vacant, palatial space to solidify her claim to it, but she soon discovers that Bill s sons aren t the only ones who want her out. The building s other residents are none too pleased by her presence either. In fact, the co op board has designs on wresting control of the apartment from both sets of children. As Tina fends off all the people who want to evict her or worse, she starts to get involved in her neighbors complex lives. There s the mercurial, eccentric botanist who may be either a friend or an enemy; the self absorbed, randy son of the co op board president, whose friendship without benefits Tina tries to curry; the large, chaotic family whose depressed teenage daughter becomes Tina s ally and spy; the ghost Tina hears crying at night in her apartment s secret room…
In this entertaining yarn by acclaimed playwright, screenwriter, and author Theresa Rebeck, we follow Tina Finn a woman both comical and compelling, well intentioned and a bit of a thief as she begins to love her new home, discovers traits to admire in people she s only just met, and realizes, finally, her place in her family and the world.

Our House

Dark Comedy

Characters: 4 males, 3 females

Are news and entertainment interchangeable? A cocksure TV bigshot faced with dwindling ratings installs America’s favorite news anchor as host of a popular reality show. Meanwhile, in Middle America, a houseful of roommates bickers over high-stakes real-world conflicts: Merv doesn’t clean the bathroom. Someone ate Alice’s yogurt. And the rent is long past due. When reality collides with reality TV, we find ourselves front and center in a drama that holds the nation riveted. Our House is a deliciously scathing new comedy that takes on a media-obsessed culture intent on turning even the most sobering crisis into sexy entertainment.

A darkly comic look at America’s obsession with ‘reality’ television.

Our House had its New York City premier at Playwrights Horizons in 2009.

Collected Plays

I am a woman; I am an American; I am a mother; I sometimes write for television, and I sometimes write movies; I play the piano; I knit; I rail at the universe; I am angry; I am sad; I am a comic realist, a misanthrope, and an idealist. There are many ways to categorize me and my work. But for myself, I would most like to be considered a playwright. Theresa Rebeck, Introduction

Complete Plays, Volume 3

In the theater community, Theresa is known as a generous artist who has contributed blistering short work for many of the programs mentioned earlier. Theresa has said that short plays should be just as fulfilling, challenging, and complex as longer pieces. The work in this volume clearly demonstrates her belief. For the first time, Theresa’s short plays are published as a single collection. It is very exciting that this work is now available to future generations of actors, directors, and theater companies. The collection reveals a mind carefully attuned to the rhythms of our society and a deep understanding of the personal obstacles individuals face. I have no doubt that these plays will become the staple of acting clas*ses across the country. I am also certain that I will hear these pieces in auditions for years to come.

Complete Full-Length Plays, Volume 2

ABSTRACT EXPRESSION A forgotten artist is rediscovered only to have tragedy descend. While society buzzes, his children lock horns over the question of Who Owns the Art?THE BUTTERFLY COLLECTION A family of artists have gathered to share a weekend in the country when a young writer’s assistant enters the mix. A comedic and mournful exploration of love, family, fidelity, and art. BAD DATES Haley has been single handedly raising a kid and running a restaurant for five years; it’s time to go out on a date. A hilarious one woman show that answers the age old question ‘Do men and women really need each other?’ with a resounding yes. THE WATER’S EDGE Seventeen years after tragedy destroyed his family, Richard returns to confront his wife and grown children. This dark Chekovian exploration of time, memory, and the possibility of redemption ponders the question, ‘How do we achieve justice in a world gone awry’?THE BELLS Long ago, a Chinaman was lost in the Yukon during the gold rush. When a Canadian bounty hunter appears, ancient crimes reveal themselves. A surreal exploration of the landscape, and the psyche, of murder. THE SCENE An actor’s frustrations with his busted career spin out of control when he meets a modern day siren who butchers the language and destroys his world. A comic tragedy that examines the collapse of American culture.

Spike Heels

Comedy / 2 male, 2 femaleScenery: InteriorPygmalion goes awry in this contemporary comedy of manners which explores sexual harassment, misplaced amour, and the possibility of a four sided love triangle. The combatants are a sexy, volatile young woman and three Back Bay types a writer, a lawyer and a fiancee in sensible shoes. The setting is Boston, the ending is happy and laughter abounds. ‘Stinging one liners.’ N.Y. Daily News. ‘Places a superior wryly pleasing…
fashionable feminist spin on sexual shenanigans. Neatly written with smart funny lines.’ N.Y. Post. ‘Full of tart wit, feminist insight and quirky detours of plot.’ Time.

Bad Dates

ComedyCharacter: 1 female Interior Set ‘And then I realize, in this sort of strange, hallucinatory moment, that the bug guy is looking kind of good, and the things he’s saying about bugs are really kind of fascinating and it is then that I realized that maybe it has been too long since I’ve been on a date.’ So confesses a single mother and self described restaurant idiot savant in this thoroughly charming and slyly sweet one woman play by the author of The Butterfly Collection and Spike Heels. This idiosyncratic journey of self discovery involving the Romanian mob, a Buddhist rainstorm, a teenage daughter, shoes, and a few very Bad Dates enjoyed an extended run Off Broadway at Playwrights Horizons starring Julie White.

Mauritius

3m, 2f / Comedy / Interior Stamp collecting is far more risky than you think. After their mother’s death, two estranged half sisters discover a book of rare stamps that may include the crown jewel for collectors. One sister tries to collect on the windfall, while the other resists for sentimental reasons. In this gripping tale, a seemingly simple sale becomes dangerous when three seedy, high stakes collectors enter the sisters’ world, willing to do anything to claim the rare find as their own. ‘Unsurprisingly for a writer with extensive experience in TV police procedurals like ‘NYPD Blue’ and ‘Law & Order: Criminal Intent,’ one of Rebeck’s strengths is her skill at stitching tension into every exchange. The five characters in Mauritius pair up and face off in shifting configurations, the emotionally fraught edges of their twisty encounters made all the more intriguing by the fact that items as apparently innocuous as postage stamps fuel the friction.’ Variety ‘One wouldn’t think that the subject of rare stamps would make for gripping, entertaining theater, but Theresa Rebeck’s Mauritius, being given its Broadway premiere by the Manhattan Theatre Club, proves otherwise…
The sort of well made, engrossing and unpretentious play rarely encountered on Broadway these days, Mauritius is a welcome introduction to the fall season.’ The Hollywood Reporter

Abstract Expression

Dramatic Comedy

Characters: 6 male, 3 female

Unit Set

After a scathing review 15 years ago, a once-celebrated painter faded into impoverished obscurity. Can one chance encounter resurrect this volatile artist from obscurity and re-launch him to overnight success? Theresa Rebeck skillfully compares the gritty urban realities of lives lived on the edge with the capricious intrigues of the uptown gallery scene where fame might just be a matter of who you know and reputations can be bought and sold.

‘Ms. Rebeck writes passionlessly about passion, colorlessly about art, self-importantly about the poor, tritely about the rich, humorlessly about the ludicrousness of art as commerce.’ -The New York Times

‘Meaningful questions of morality, aesthetics and class conflict.’ -The Seattle Times

‘Underneath her satirical surface, equal to the best of Richard Brinsley Sheridan in The School for Scandal, Rebeck rekindles the troubling assertion that it was the support of the political, financial and artistic establishment that made possible the triumph of absract expressionist paintings and transferred the capital of the art world from Paris to New York.’ –New Haven Register

Free Fire Zone

Theresa Rebeck’s career has hopscotched between the Off Broadway successes of plays such as Spike Heels, The Family of Mann, and View of the Dome, to award winning work writing and producing network television such as NYPD Blue, to writing screenplays for independent and studio features. This writer s guide is both a discussion of the writer s craft and a no holds barred discussion of the politics in the movie, television, and theater worlds. Rebeck writes, ‘Someone once asked me, What advice would you give to young writers who wanted to go into show business? And I answered, almost without thinking, Tell all of them to go back and reread Machiavelli. ‘ In a series of hilarious and provocative discussions covering all aspects of dramatic writing, Rebeck attempts to address what she considers both of a writer s primary concerns how to tell a story with truth and vision and how to maneuver as a dramatic writer in a dangerous world.