Richard Greenberg (1958-2025)

I’m a tall guy. Not freakishly tall, but I am just over six feet, which means that in a crowd, I am usually able to see over most people’s heads.

When I encounter someone taller than me, and I need to look up at them while we are talking, it is a novel experience. The power dynamic changes. I am sure that my height, in some measure, has contributed to my success as a stage manager. Mind you, I know many great stage managers who are on the short side. If I am being honest with myself, though, I think I have used my height in some situations to help get things done.

I am also a fairly smart guy. Part of that is the education I’ve received, but a lot of it, I was just born with. School was never really much of a challenge, and I mostly enjoyed it. Mostly. I’m no genius, but I can usually hold up my end of a conversation.

Richard Greenberg towered over me in the intelligence department. I mean, towered. I had to stand on tiptoes just to stay within his eyeline. I was, however, sharp enough that he’d enjoy talking to me. I am sure he was playing on my vanity, but he’d often call me over to the side to talk about something that was going on in rehearsals. He’d ask me if I’d noticed something that had happened, and when I told him what I’d seen, if it was what he’d also noticed, he’d beam.

Making Richard laugh was a challenge and one of my greatest joys when I achieved it.

Richard Greenberg was a playwright. I was lucky enough to stage manage two productions of a play of his called The American Plan. Both were done at Manhattan Theatre Club a million years ago.

The first time we did it, we were in the small space at City Center. There, the three younger people were played by Tate Donovan, Eric Stoltz, and Rebecca Miller. When we remounted it the following year in the big space, the cast was D.W. Moffat, Jonathan Walker, and Wendy Makkena. Bea Winde was in the first production, and Yvette Hawkins was in the second.

In both productions the matriarch and lead character, was played by Joan Copeland. Joan was something. She was smart as hell, too. Joan was the sister of the playwright Arthur Miller. Rebecca Miller from the first production is Arthur Miller’s daughter, so Joan was her aunt.

Richard would say something in the room, and Joan’s eyes would narrow. She’d look at Richard before deciding how she was going to react. Richard would wait while Joan decided whether he was going to get a laugh or an argument. He seemed to be happy with either.

Joan had a huge prewar apartment that she’d owned for years. During the first production, she had us all over for a party. Her home had a casual old-money elegance that I had only ever seen before in movies. When her brother married Marilyn Monroe, she became Joan’s sister-in-law. There was a picture of Marilyn on the mantle.

I remember sitting on the couch with Richard and laughing about the fact that this was as close as either of us would ever get to living that way.

In a review of the play that put him on the map, Eastern Standard, the critic Frank Rich called Richard “the voice of his generation.” Richard always felt that the comment derailed his career. He told me that he never felt he could live up to it.

I found some pictures from that party at Joan’s. This one only has Joan’s back. Eric Stoltz is at the piano, and Evan Yionoulis, our director, is standing next to him. Evan and Richard were such close friends that they rarely needed to finish sentences when they were together. I remember that night fondly.

Rest in peace, Richard Greenberg. I don’t know if you were the voice of our generation, but you were a fantastic writer. It was an honor to work with you and laugh together.