Second in a series for Women’s History Month
In last week’s profile of Angelina Fiordellisi, the first in BWW’s series on women artistic directors, the Cherry Lane Theatre AD said there definitely was a “boys club” mentality among off-Broadway artists and backers. But when the same question was posed to Sarah Benson, artistic director of Soho Rep, she said, “I don’t experience that at all. There’s so many female playwrights and directors and designers that we work with.”
Benson specifically excluded the downtown theater community—to which both she and Fiordellisi (whose theater is in Greenwich Village) belong. “Certainly not downtown,” said Benson, then added: “Well, certainly not in my experience, I should say. I don’t know what other people’s experiences are.”
Perhaps Benson hasn’t faced the same obstacles because she took over a theater 30 years into its existence, whereas Fiordellisi helms a company that she founded. Benson is also in charge of a smaller operation: The Soho Rep theater, which is actually located in Tribeca on Walker St., seats only 74 people, and ticket prices top out at $35. Or it could be a generational difference: Benson just turned 30 last year. “I’m sure the only reason I am able to operate without encountering a lot of bias,” Benson says, “is the pioneering work of the generation that came before—my predecessors, the women who were involved in founding many of the nonprofits years ago.”
One of those women, Marlene Swartz, established Soho Rep in 1975. After she left the company in the ’90s (she went on to co-direct Blue Man Group), it was headed by Julian Webber and then Daniel Aukin, both Brits. Benson’s fall 2006 appointment as artistic director returned Soho Rep to female hands, but kept up the post-Swartz tradition of British AD’s.
A graduate of King’s College London, Benson came to the U.S. on a Fulbright scholarship in 2002. In London, she’d co-founded a theater named Arion, which specialized in site-specific productions. She was first drawn to the stage to be on it, but says, “I was a terrible, terrible actor.” While she was still in school, “someone had the good sense to tell me that I didn’t have to be in plays,” she recalls. “So from about 18 onwards, I moved into directing.”
While enrolled in Brooklyn College’s graduate directing program on the Fulbright, Benson started working at Soho Rep. By 2004, she’d ascended to associate artistic director of the company and co-chair of its Writer/Director Lab. She has also directed plays at New York Stage and Film, HERE and La MaMa, and she’s curated new-works festivals in New York and Edinburgh.
The first production staged at Soho Rep under Benson’s leadership, Adam Bock’s The Thugs, won two Obie awards. The company was also honored with an Obie for sustained excellence the year she took over as AD. Expect additional honors for Benson when awards time comes around this year, for her direction of Sarah Kane’s Blasted, one of the biggest commercial and critical hits of the season. Last fall, while show after show posted their closing notice uptown, wait-listed theatergoers lined up outside Soho Rep for the chance to subject themselves to graphic depictions of rape, cannibalism and eye-gouging in Kane’s piercing war allegory. Blasted sold out its originally scheduled one-month run before it even opened and was extended twice. Benson herself was surprised by its success, even though she’d been aiming for some time to give the 1995 play its New York premiere. “Obviously I adore the play and think that Sarah’s work is just amazing, but I was shocked that it was so popular,” she remarks.
As unique as it was, Blasted epitomized Soho Rep’s penchant for unconventional fare, which has been its mission from the start. The play also showcased the theater’s emphasis on superb, innovative design—an emphasis that many small downtown theaters simply can’t afford to bother with. In Blasted, a hotel room is literally torn apart by a simulated bombing. Sixty Miles to Silver Lake, which played at Soho Rep after Blasted, also featured a set with parts that upended.
