Solid Gold
Broadway’s buzzy new director Sam Gold had dinner with Alan Rickman and you didn’t.
By Whitney Spaner
Photographed by Atisha Paulson
On the eve of his Broadway debut, director Sam Gold is on high alert. "My iPhone has become a kind of bomb that goes off when I open it," explains the 33-year-old director of the new Broadway play Seminar, written by prolific playwright Theresa Rebeck. "My job is making a live event, so things go wrong all the time." But it's actually these panic-inducing moments that keep him sane. "I feel good when I have a lot to do. I'm not good with idle time. I go crazy."
Luckily, he hasn't had much of it lately. In the last few years Gold has garnered acclaim for directing off- and off-off-Broadway plays like Circle Mirror Transformation and Kin, which caught the attention of Rebeck as well as actor Alan Rickman, who had dinner with the young director after seeing Kin. Rickman now stars in Seminar as Leonard, a manipulative novelist-turned-professor who tears apart the fragile egos of a group of narcissistic writing students played by Jerry O'Connell, Lily Rabe, Hamish Linklater and Hettienne Park.
Gold, who grew up in Manhattan obsessed with becoming an artist, can relate. "I lived in the Film Forum and watched a lot of French New Wave films and read a lot of poststructuralist
philosophy -- I was a pretty obnoxious, pretentious child." And he deals with writers on a daily basis, not only at work but at home; he's married to playwright Amy Herzog. "These young creative people [in Seminar] are struggling to find out who they are, battling with the demons and sort of self-actualizing. I definitely have been in that situation."
For now, Gold's demons are silenced and he's looking forward to heading back downtown this spring to tackle Uncle Vanya at the Soho Rep. Sitting in an extra dressing room in the Golden Theatre, we hear the actors buzzing about after rehearsal, and before he's whisked away by a clipboard-carrying crew member, he says, "This is where I wanted to be, working on projects that are really varied -- new plays on Broadway, or Chekhov in a 75-seat theater in Tribeca. I love my year."
★ Seminar is now playing at the John Golden Theatre, 252 W. 45th st., New York. ★
Luckily, he hasn't had much of it lately. In the last few years Gold has garnered acclaim for directing off- and off-off-Broadway plays like Circle Mirror Transformation and Kin, which caught the attention of Rebeck as well as actor Alan Rickman, who had dinner with the young director after seeing Kin. Rickman now stars in Seminar as Leonard, a manipulative novelist-turned-professor who tears apart the fragile egos of a group of narcissistic writing students played by Jerry O'Connell, Lily Rabe, Hamish Linklater and Hettienne Park.
Gold, who grew up in Manhattan obsessed with becoming an artist, can relate. "I lived in the Film Forum and watched a lot of French New Wave films and read a lot of poststructuralist
philosophy -- I was a pretty obnoxious, pretentious child." And he deals with writers on a daily basis, not only at work but at home; he's married to playwright Amy Herzog. "These young creative people [in Seminar] are struggling to find out who they are, battling with the demons and sort of self-actualizing. I definitely have been in that situation."
For now, Gold's demons are silenced and he's looking forward to heading back downtown this spring to tackle Uncle Vanya at the Soho Rep. Sitting in an extra dressing room in the Golden Theatre, we hear the actors buzzing about after rehearsal, and before he's whisked away by a clipboard-carrying crew member, he says, "This is where I wanted to be, working on projects that are really varied -- new plays on Broadway, or Chekhov in a 75-seat theater in Tribeca. I love my year."
★ Seminar is now playing at the John Golden Theatre, 252 W. 45th st., New York. ★
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