Tanya Berezin, Behind-the-Scenes Off Broadway Force, Dies at 82
At the Circle Repertory Company, where she said her goal was to “confuse people,” she nurtured a new generation of writers and actors in the 1980s and ’90s.By the mid-1980s, Tanya Berezin had gone far as a New York stage actress. She had collected glowing reviews for her Off Broadway performances over the years, and she had won an Obie Award for her role in Lanford Wilson’s play “The Mound Builders” in 1975.Even so, she was growing weary of the hustle. “When you’re in your 40s it seems really sort of inappropriate to be waiting for telephone calls from people to ask you to do a job,” she said in a 1993 interview. “It just feels really uncomfortable and childish.”Her budding career crisis turned out to be an opportunity. In 1986, Ms. Berezin turned her attention from the stage to a highly influential behind-the-scenes role in the theater world: artistic director of the Circle Repertory Company, a storied Off Broadway incubator of talent that she had helped found in 1969.Ms. Berezin died on Nov. 29 at the home of her daughter, Lila Thirkield, in San Francisco. She was 82. Ms. Thirkield said the cause of her death, which was not widely reported at the time, was lung cancer.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? More
