stone cold dedicated: stephen belber
Stephen Belber - playwright, sometime actor and reporter, wayward philosopher, former dabbler in the art of the novel – has always, regardless of the medium, displayed a keen interest in the underbelly of the world around him. From his early days as a student of philosophy, to stints at a Saudi Arabian wire news agency in Washington, D.C., to his investigative theatrical contributions to The Laramie Project, Belber has displayed a knack for peeling away the layers and digging into the uncomfortable dark places in people’s lives.
Stephen Belber was born in 1964, and spent his youth in Washington, D.C., taking frequent family vacations to Atlantic City. After completing an undergraduate degree in philosophy, Belber discovered he had a talent and a passion for writing. His first experiments came in the form of prose, but he slowly realized he enjoyed the more immediate back-and-forth of writing dialogue. He had long nurtured an acting bug, and the transition from writing short stories and novels to writing for the theatre was natural. In his early efforts, he concentrated on personal experiences of the world, crafting solo shows that reflected his life in D.C. The responses were positive and Belber longed to try his luck in New York. At the age of 25, Belber packed up, moved north, and began performing his solo play Psychotic Busboy Blues in the crucible of the New York theatre scene.
He lived the life of a working artist, ricocheting between night-time performances and his various day jobs, which included standards like waiting tables and catering, as well as slightly more unusual gigs as a teacher in the New York Public School system, and as a wire service reporter at the United Nations. It was during this period that Belber began to feel the need for more structure and guidance in his writing life. Playwrights Horizons’ well-respected theatre school, a program dedicated to nurturing playwrights and their work, appealed to Belber. But he was torn: should he take a risk and totally dedicate himself to a field already saturated with people trying to find their big break? Or should he pursue another tantalizing, and more stable option – namely, a graduate degree in philosophy at Boston University, where he already had a connection with the chair of the department? Passion won out: Belber applied to Playwrights Horizons and was accepted.
It was at Playwrights Horizons that Belber first met Nicholas Martin, who was then the theatre’s Associate Artistic Director. Martin taught a monologue class in which Belber was a student, and the two hit it off. Belber was working on his third solo show at the time, and brought pieces of it into class. Martin responded to the material, and directed a reading of the completed play, One Million Butterflies, at the theatre later that year.
Playwrights Horizons served as a valuable jumping-off point for the young writer; he was accepted to the prestigious playwriting program at The Juilliard School in 1994. There, Belber found his work reaching new levels, thanks to the school’s amazing resources. “You had at your disposal this incredible array of Juilliard-trained actors who would be available to you every week for readings and workshops,” says Belber. “In my second year, I got to use them in a full production” – his first full-length, multi-actor play, Stone Cold Lyricism. It was then, he says, that “I finally felt I had the energy to do this, and the notion to do it. It was a great kick in the butt.”
Shortly thereafter Belber found himself quite unexpectedly in the midst of deep research with playwright/director Moises Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theatre Project. Kaufman, who had just finished work on his play Gross Indecency, was moved to create a theatrical response to Matthew Shepard’s fatal beating in Laramie, Wyoming. Belber, finding himself in the right place at the right time, was able to parlay his journalistic and playwriting skills into a spot on the Tectonic team as they headed to Laramie to interview townspeople. Two years later, The Laramie Project was complete, and Belber was not only an actor in the production, but an associate writer. Meanwhile, Belber’s play, Tape, was produced by Actors Theatre of Louisville in the 2000 Humana Festival of New American Plays. The success at Actors led Tape to be produced around the world, and turned into a 2001 film directed by Richard Linklater, and starring Uma Thurman, Robert Sean Leonard, and Ethan Hawke.
In 2004, Belber finally teamed up with Nicholas Martin for their first professional collaboration: Belber’s Broadway debut play, Match, starring Frank Langella, Ray Liotta, and Jane Adams. Belber’s other plays include The Transparency of Val; The Wake; Through Fred; The Death of Frank; Finally, the winner of the 2000 Fringe NYC Overall Excellence Award in playwriting; Drifting Elegant, which was presented at Boston’s New Reperatory Theatre in 2001; Mel and Gene, which received a workshop at the Lincoln Center Directors Lab; A Small Melodramatic Story, which was featured at the 2003 O’Neill Playwrights Conference; and McReele, which completed a 2005 spring run at the Roundabout Theatre Company in New York, and is scheduled for a fall 2005 production at Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre. He has received commissions from Playwrights Horizons, Arena Stage, Philadelphia Theater Company, and from the Huntington Theatre Company, for which he wrote Stabbing, and which was further developed in the 2004 Breaking Ground Festival.
Belber’s film credits include the screenplays for Tape, The Laramie Project, and Drifting Elegant (in pre-production), and he has multiple film commissions currently in development. His television work includes the Denis Leary show, “Rescue Me,” and a year-and-a-half as a writer for “Law & Order: SVU.” He received an Emmy nomination for screenwriting (Laramie), and Juilliard’s Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Fellowship. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, director Lucie Tiberghien, and their two children.