Meet Rosalind Grush | Writer & Producer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Rosalind Grush and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Rosalind, what led you to pursuing a creative path professionally?
I am a writer and producer. Writing, the arts, performance, and storytelling have been central to what I do and think about every day, since I started reading and watching TV. I was always going to do something in the arts and I’ve done a ton of different things. In school, I played a piano concerto with an orchestra. I was a featured personality on a Disney reality TV show. I was a violinist in a mariachi band. I had so much fun creating things as a kid and there was no other direction my life was going to go.

When I graduated from college, I was working with a bunch of little theater companies and helping them produce their first shows. I used that experience to shift into working professionally for generative theater companies in NYC and eventually, I served as the Co-Artistic Director of a non-profit theater in Manhattan called The Tank, where I did all the jobs – curator, artistic program developer, therapist, financial manager, fundraiser, janitor, you name it. I was meeting tons of fascinating people and helping them tell their stories and I loved it. But I also realized I had my own stories to tell, so I started writing short plays and TV pilots, and realized that I loved dreaming up worlds and using my writing as a way to understand the world around me.

I love artists and collaboration, and thinking of the world in new ways and bringing new worlds to life, whether they’re new worlds I dream up in my writing or producing worlds that other people dream up. The arts, artistic expression – it’s at the core of who I am, there was never anything else I was going to do.

But even outside of what I love to do or what I find fun, I think the arts are critical to any functioning society. I think we are, in many ways, prisoners of our own experience, and the arts provide a way to broaden your understanding of the world and humanity. Through theater, film, and TV, I learn about people I might not normally meet, places I might not normally have access to, ideas I wouldn’t think of on my own. It helps to build empathy, which helps me think about things in new ways and extend greater kindness towards people whose experience I might not intuitively understand. At the end of the day, empathy is the most important skill and quality we have as human beings. It’s what binds us as a family, it’s what brings us together as a community, it’s what holds friendships together – and it’s also what helps us come together to work towards shared goals, it’s obviously a critical tool for having a job so it’s really funny to me how little our society values it. I guess CEO’s worry that if we cared more about each other, we’d demand better working conditions before we started working harder, which I suppose is true.

But anyway, on a bigger scale, empathy is what should be guiding public policy. The arts are a critical tool for helping people broaden their horizons and understand the vastness and complexity of the human experience. It’s a great honor to be even a small part of this work, whether I’m doing it as a writer or producer or fundraiser or props person or sweeping the floors of a theater.

Plus I love prat falls and fart jokes and you don’t get as many of those in other careers.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I write original TV pilots, plays, short films, and other random things. I write comedies, mostly about dystopian societies, including this one. Humans have made so much stuff. Some of it’s amazing: bridges! stethoscopes! hamburgers! And so much of it is trash: the electoral college! for-profit health insurance! insufficient maternity leave! How did all this happen? Who did this? Obviously you follow the money but there are always so many twists and turns to why our world is the way it is, it’s really fun and depressing to dig into.

I’m obsessed with writing about work. When I was a kid, the question of “what do you want to be when you grow up” was one that ran through everything I did. If I did well on a science test, maybe I’d become a scientist and I’d save the world from climate change! If I worked on the school paper, maybe I’d become a journalist and uncover the next Watergate! What I decided to do for a living felt like a really important thing – that was the expression of my innermost talents and passions, the realization of my truest self, and the way that I could leave my mark on the world. Obviously we know now that’s all bullshit, but it’s a very romantic notion when you think about it. I write about it a lot, and I obviously still believe in it since I still only take jobs that I can align with my values on some level (which is why I’ll never have enough money to retire). (No shade to those who go for the paycheck, you are much smarter than me.)

I’m trying to think about the challenges – there are a lot of them! There are the obvious ones wrapped up in being a woman; a lot of men have told me that things I want to do are not possible, and they’re always wrong, though advancing in the workplace does often take me longer than some of my male colleagues. I also started my career on the arts admin side, and it can be really hard to change careers, even if the careers are super adjacent to each other. Then there’s the fact that the industry has basically fully imploded three times in the last five years! I don’t know. I think you have to just do what you like to do, and keep doing it, because you get better at it the more you do it. Eventually, some weird opportunity will come your way, and then you just have to make sure you have the skills to rise to the occasion.

I guess what I’d just like people to know is that I’ve done a lot, I’ve seen a lot, I’ve met a lot of people, and I think about a lot of weird things – and I’m available for staffing. 😊

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Well the first stop would be The Museum of Jurassic Technology, one of my favorite museums in the entire world. In terms of restaurants, we’d go to Baja Buds on the west side (sorry, I grew up over there), Azizam, HMS Bounty, maybe Here’s Looking at You in Ktown. We could catch a movie at the Vista or Aero or Braindead, or see if LA Film Forum or Mezzanine had any screenings. I’d probably look at what was going on at The Elysian or Dynasty Typewriter. Not to be a dick about it but I’m honestly much cooler in NYC – if you want any recs out there, let me know, I’ll send you to some crusty dive bars and very weird theater.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
There are so many people to thank, how much time do I have?! I do need to shout out the recently departed Richard Foreman – one of the great theatermakers in NYC who made a new play every year for decades and basically reinvented theatrical semiotics. My first theater internship was at his theater in the East Village, which no longer exists, and I learned so much about weird theatrics and comedy from him and his work. I realized that I like seeing things that are new and strange and that challenge my world view in some way, that expand what I think is possible or what I think I know to be true. His work also led me to many of my absolute favorite artists and groups, and I am very grateful to have been anywhere even close to his orbit.

I definitely need to thank my high school piano teacher, Alpha Walker, who taught me how to work and learn and analyze and perform. My high school mariachi teacher, Dan Taguchi, was also a huge influence – showing me that it’s so fun to hang out with a bunch of artists and make something beautiful together. Then there are literally hundreds of people I worked with in New York through my work with theater companies including The Civilians, Playwrights Realm, Sinking Ship Productions, Wolf 359, PearlDamour – I was so lucky to see so many of the top writers, directors, designers and actors create new things and put them out into the world. And then of course I have so many incredible co-workers and artists through my work at The Tank – people who supported my own writing by being in my weird little plays and people who believed in the vision I was putting forward through the organization – who were willing to collaborate and share resources and support each other, and who trusted me to be a small (or sometimes big) part of helping them realize their visions. And then of course there are my grad school teachers and classmates who helped me become a much better writer. Also, omg my husband and my parents and my friends and my dog! They say it takes a village but I’ve been really lucky to have a few really incredible villages!

Instagram: @grushhour

Image Credits
for the photo entitled “By Josh Luxenberg” – please caption with: Rosalind Grush as Douglas Gordon as Kurt Cobain as Andy Warhol as Myra Hindley as Marilyn Monroe, by Josh Luxenberg”