![]() In addition to meeting Crane, her involvement in theater helped shape her skills as a writer. “Not only did I get to start working with David, I got to start writing with David.” “That was probably one of the greatest gifts Brandeis gave me,” she said. ![]() The theater department at Brandeis was mostly geared toward graduate students at the time, so Kauffman was very grateful that they were given the opportunity by the University to write and perform as undergraduates. She and Crane went on to write a couple of plays together while attending the University, one of which ended up in the American College Theater Festival. “He said, ‘No, but I’ll direct it with you,’” she recalled. Later, when she was asked to direct an undergraduate performance of the play “Bad Spell,” she asked Crane if he would be part of the cast. “I played a hooker, was a street urchin, and that’s actually how we met,” she recalled. The two met as part of the cast of a production “Camino Real,” a play by Tennessee Williams. Namely, it’s where she met David Crane ’79, with whom she created “Friends.” “That was huge,” Kauffman said. She says her professors taught her that if “you have enough people who feel passionately about something, you have to try it.” Encouraging people to push themselves and go beyond their own expectations is something she said she learned to do at Brandeis.ĬONVERSATION: Kauffman spoke to the Justice over Zoom on April 20.Īttending Brandeis had a major impact on Kauffman’s career. Kauffman noted that while she typically has the final say in the writers’ rooms she runs, the environment she creates is a democratic one. The support and encouragement her professors gave their students has stuck with her through her own work and informs her approach to leadership and creativity as a television writer and producer. Kauffman described how when she began to run a writers’ room for a television show, she found herself utilizing certain strategies and techniques that she had seen her professors use during her time at Brandeis. “His work as an educator was so impressive and made me want to learn about something I could’ve cared less about.” “He would give us lab reports, and our job was to circle every single thing we didn’t understand, and then he would walk us through it,” Kauffman recalled. She said that the most memorable part of that class was the way the professor taught his students. “It was the most eye-opening experience of my life,” she said of the course, which examined feminism in written works.ĭespite the fact that Kauffman was focused on the arts, another favorite course of hers was a course in the Biology department taught by a former professor named Herman Epstein. Kauffman was quick to mention one of them, a seminar entitled Women in Literature. Kauffman majored in theater, but to her surprise, some of her favorite courses were not in that department. “I’m so grateful that’s the school I ended up at. I think back on them so fondly,” she said. “Those were the best four years of my life at that point. Looking back, Kauffman said she is confident that this was the right decision. She was looking for a place where she could study theater and she said that she wanted a broader, more interdisciplinary education, both of which she felt Brandeis could offer. While finding a Jewish community was a large part of why Kauffman decided to attend the University, she was also attracted to the liberal arts approach. “ a place where I could be comfortable … and not deal with the kind of antisemitism that I grew up with,” Kauffman said. While searching for colleges to apply to, she heard about Brandeis and said she was drawn to the idea of being at a school where she would not be discriminated against or made to feel like an outsider for being Jewish. ![]() She remembers thinking during her time at camp, “People aren’t asking me, ‘Where are horns?’” “I grew up in a neighborhood that was pretty antisemitic,” she told the Justice during an April 20 Zoom interview, describing an incident where her AP French teacher told Kauffman that she “made French ugly and guttural like Hebrew.” Kauffman’s desire to find a more accepting community was reaffirmed when she attended Jewish summer camp, as it was the first time she was in a place where she felt it was okay to be Jewish. First and foremost, it was a place where she could feel secure in her Judaism. Since her time at Brandeis, she has amassed Emmy nominations and critical acclaim, but before she was the co-creator of the hit television series “Friends” and “Grace and Frankie,” among others, she was a student, figuring out who she was and what she wanted to do with her life.ĭuring her search for the right college, Kauffman knew that Brandeis had much to offer her. When Marta Kauffman ’78 H’20 enrolled as a student at Brandeis, there was no way for her to know where her four years at the University would take her.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |