Meet Rachel Saruski | Playwright and Multidisciplinary Theatre Artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Rachel Saruski and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Rachel, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking
I feel like everything in my creative journey so far has been a risk. When I applied to be a National Young Playwright in Residence with Echo Theatre Company, I hadn’t even finished my first play yet. I knew it wasn’t going to be perfect, and I felt that the possibility of me receiving the opportunity was slim to none. But I felt I had a story to tell, and it was something that interested me. More than anything, it was something that made me nervous. And if something makes me nervous creatively, it’s usually a sign that I should do that thing, because that’s when I do my best work. Because I have no roadmap in my head of what something is supposed to look like or how I should execute a story or a project, I have no other option but to make it up myself. I have no other choice but to think outside the box and be unafraid of my creative or risky choices. But because of my risk-taking, I did become an Echo Theatre National Young Playwright in Residence, I have pursued other opportunities I didn’t even remotely believe I would get. And it’s all thanks to that gut feeling, that little ball of nerves that whispers in my ear “do it! do it!”. And now, I listen to it always.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I consider myself a playwright and a multidisciplinary theatre artist. I currently attend Sarah Lawrence College, where I study Theatre, Literature, and Writing. I didn’t see myself becoming a playwright at first. But when I was registering for my classes my first semester freshman year, there was some kind of computer glitch and my class choices had erased and all the classes I had wanted to take were full. I signed up for whatever classes had space left, and one of them was playwriting. And I guess you can say the rest is history. I always loved to write, and I had been doing theatre since I was 12, but I had never found a way to merge the two together to create something I really loved. I love the creation of worlds that playwriting entails, with the end product being a fully conceptualized show with actors, designers, costumes, lights, directors, stage managers, etc. Theatre is the love of my life, and I will do whatever I have to do to be a part of it. In school, I also study acting, singing, dance, and directing, and participate in our theatre department’s productions whether it be as an actor, assistant director, assistant stage manager, or projections operator. I have acted in plays in Miami such as “The Most Beautiful Day on Earth” by Arianna Rose at Microtheatre Miami, and other small assorted projects in the area. In the year 2020, as destructive and saddening as it was, I was able to write two plays: “Our Historia”, a play about my Jewish-Latinx family and growing up with two special needs brothers, and “The Man Who Lived Five Lives” an epic about the life of my late grandfather. Our Historia was chosen for reading for the Sarah Lawrence Theatre Department’s First Look Reading Series, is a Garry Marshal Theatre Company New Works Festival 2020 Semi-Finalist, and an Austin Film Festival 2020 Playwriting Contest Second Rounder. I was also named one of Echo Theatre’s National Young Playwrights in Residence 2020, where I was able to work under the mentorship of playwright Kira Obolensky to write “The Man Who Lived Five Lives”, which received a reading at the end of the program as well. When I first started writing I simply thought it was putting words to the page, no more no less. But it has taught me so much about life, perseverance, and hardship. Sometimes I would finish writing scenes and I would cry because it was hard to not only write about my own life stories but to express the jumble of thoughts and ideas that were tangled into my head, trying to escape onto the page. But there were also tears of joy and happiness; when a scene came out just right when a beautiful idea would simply pop into my head when I would finish my plays. And about that, I never feel my plays are ever really finished; they’re a constant work in progress, and that has been something I continue to struggle with. But I want to continue to tell stories for the rest of my life, whether it be on the page, on the stage, or somewhere in between. I want to make people feel something with my work, something they didn’t expect to feel walking into a theatre. I want people to know the experiences of underrepresented people, groups, and their families. I want a little girl to be able to watch my work and feel the joy in her heart that can only be created by seeing herself and her family represented on the stage, something I wish I had had more of, and something that many people do not experience in their lifetime. My goal in life is just to continue to create art and to do it happily with the people around me. Because theatre without collaborators, without other artists whose minds are masterpieces, is nothing but an empty stage. I want to create art with other people who make me happy, in order to inspire other people to create art of their own, for the rest of my life.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I am in love with New York City, and I always will be. If I could, I would take them to see every Broadway show we could, and then go to central park and lay on the lawn and look at the stars. I would also take them to my home, Miami Beach, and have them try my Mom’s famous rice and beans, spend time with my family, dance along the beach. I’d take them up and down the streets, I’ve walked my whole life, and tell them the stories of each place we passed.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I want to thank my family, for all their love and tireless support through everything, they are my rock! I want to thank Sarah Lawrence Theatre and Echo Theatre Company for the amazing opportunities they have given me and all I have learned in my theatre journey thus far!

Website: https://newplayexchange.org/users/59576/rachel-saruski

Instagram: @rachelsaruski

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