Nurturing a Talent

Emily Wiest ’12, playwright

Major: Theatre

Leonard Berkman’s influential courses: Writing for Theatre, Modern European Drama

He was there for everything: “Len didn’t miss one single reading of mine when I was at school. All of the professors did an enormous amount to be there for students, but Len was the only one there for everything—he didn’t miss the smallest one-act reading. He goes above and beyond in every way and with a smile on his face.”

How he inspired my career: “We always  met in the green room for class, and Leonard would walk around the couches and talk. He allowed us to have our plays read in class, as a privilege for working hard. I wrote my first short play in his class—the play I submitted to get into the graduate program in playwriting at Columbia. When Len gave this play attention, I realized that I had something there. It felt incredible and sparked a need to write dialogue and then out of that grew the beginning of a new life story for myself.”

A constant reader: “After I graduated, he continued to read my work endlessly as if I were still a student. He helped me develop my one-act into a full-length. Now, I’m writing full-length scripts and I’m sending him 120-page drafts, and he’s reading them still.”

Smoothing the road: “I funded and wrote and produced and acted and directed a feature film called BadPuss: A Popumentary right out of Smith. We premiered in New York, but he helped us show it at Smith and made it an actual part of the theatre department season. He’s a very unique professor who takes a lot of interest in his students.”

MENTOR: LEONARD BERKMAN

Anne Hesseltine Hoyt Professor of Theatre 

Photograph by Sam Masinter

Leonard Berkman met Emily Wiest just before her first semester, through acting friends. “At that first breakfast, I could already discern Emily’s fusion of shy, vulnerable sensitivity with the clear determination and strength not to let herself become inhibited,” Berkman says. “I knew that she would not be a person who would take the easy route when the tougher was more productive.” Berkman saw her love of writing grow in his classes. Wiest, daughter of veteran actress Dianne Wiest, smartly trained herself in all aspects of production, initiating projects with Berkman and other professors. “Emily’s script writing for both stage and film is distinctive,” Berkman says, “especially for her courageous willingness to portray character extremity without distancing herself from excess, without ordinary writers’ safety nets of critique, irony or mockery.” Above all, he admires Wiest’s enthusiasm about other people’s talent. “For me, Emily is as much a guide for me as I hope I am for her, because she becomes so enthusiastic for things other people are doing. She is not only a receiver, but a giver.”

This story appears in the Winter 2016-17 issue of the Smith Alumnae Quarterly.

Photograph by Beth Perkins