FROM CALLING CUES TO TAKING THEM

Ruth Sternberg on her unexpected return to The Public—
this time as an actor

For nearly two decades, Ruth Sternberg was one of the steady, unseen engines of The Public Theater—an institutional pillar whose work shaped everything from Hair in the Park to the explosive rise of Hamilton. After joining the company in 2005 (when Oskar Eustis took over as Artistic Director), she became a central figure in production, operations, and stage management, the kind of behind-the-scenes force whose name appears in everyone else’s acknowledgments. When she retired in 2023, it seemed like the natural close to a monumental career. But Sternberg has never been wired for stillness, and retirement—brief, restless, and full of side projects—unexpectedly set the stage for something no one, least of all she, saw coming: her acting debut in the world premiere of Ethan Lipton’s The Seat of Our Pants at The Public. Stage and Cinema’s writer Gregory Fletcher sat down with The Public Theater’s longtime production powerhouse to talk about retirement, reinvention, and stepping into the spotlight.

Gregory Fletcher: Did Oskar fight you on early retirement?

Ruth Sternberg: There was nothing early about it. No, he didn’t try to talk me out of it, but he would say things like, “You know, I thought we’d retire together…”

But you’re back at The Public acting onstage. Were you not enjoying retirement?

Well, my garden looked fantastic; I’ll tell you that. But five months in, I started bouncing off the walls. So, I started taking on other projects: I was consulting for the Cape Playhouse in Dennis, Massachusetts, which was really fun. I got a call to be the production manager of a light trail at the “Nightmare Before Christmas” in the Botanical Gardens in the Bronx. Thankfully, the calls didn’t stop coming because I was retired. And I kept taking projects that had an element of something I had never done before.

Like acting in the world premiere of a new musical?

Exactly.

Shuler Hensley, Ruth Sternberg, and Micaela Diamond in Ethan Lipton’s The Seat of Our Pants,
his musical adaptation of Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth. Photo: Joan Marcus.

Was it your idea? Did you make the call to the casting office?

No, believe it or not, I was offered the role. I had attended the opening night of Deep Blue Sound in the Shiva Theater, which was directed by Arin Arbus, the partner of Ethan Lipton. He had been workshopping The Seat of Our Pants at the Public since 2018, and finally it was prepping for a full main stage production. When I saw Ethan, I went over to him and chatted a bit, and a few days later I got the offer. The story I heard was that Ethan stated plainly that he didn’t want the role of the stage manager to be played by an actor, but rather by a stage manager. “Like Ruth Sternberg.” According to Leigh Silverman [the director], she said, “Why don’t we call Ruth Sternberg?” But later, I heard the casting office suggested, “Why don’t we call Ruth Sternberg?” And according to Oskar Eustis, he said, “Why don’t you call Ruth?” So, basically, I don’t really know the truth.

Was it an easy yes?

Not at all. I asked to see the script. Then I said, yes.

What made you say “Yes?” Or rather, what would have made you say “No?”

If the role was too big for me, I would’ve said no because I am very aware of my limitations as an actor. Also, I wanted to make sure I could connect with the character and understand what it was they were asking of me. I had a text exchange with Leigh who promised she wouldn’t let me suck. I also made it clear that I didn’t sing. Since it was a musical, I figured that had to be clear. I had a long working history with Leigh, so I trusted her. She was very supportive.

Oskar Eustis and Ruth E. Sternberg
opening night photo by Rebecca J Michelson

Maybe you didn’t sing, but you certainly were dancing during the huge dance number at the end of the show. Was that a surprise?

I knew there was a full cast dance number at the end. They told me, “You’re gonna have to do a simple line dance.” Luckily, the direction was that it didn’t need to be perfect.

Did you have private lessons?

I learned it with everybody else, but I did ask for a video and some extra time from the choreography team so I could practice on my own. And believe me, I practiced every day. As a former stage manager, I had seen first-hand what it meant to be a disciplined actor, so I went through my lines and practiced the dance every single day.

And just like that, you were working on the other side of the table. How was that?

There were so many things I just assumed I knew about acting from being around it. But there were so many things I had never considered. One of the things I find very challenging is being still onstage. I’ve never had to be still while working. But of course, when the focus is on somebody else in a scene, you don’t want to upstage them. Also, with the interactions with other actors onstage, I didn’t realize how much actually comes from them as opposed to being directed. In moments where a group of actors are reacting to something that’s happening, I’m interacting with them. But we were never told to do it or what the specifics were. If what we did was acceptable, meaning we never got a note on it, then it became a part the scene.

I take it from all your former work at The Public, you knew many of the actors you were working with? Did that make it easier?

Yes, I was very lucky because about half of them I’d worked with before in a different capacity, so I was able to ask for advice. Questions that, I’m sure, belonged in an acting 101 class. For example, there’s a scene in the show after a big fight onstage, and I have no lines, but I’m standing right there. My question was, “How much can I react to what they’re saying and how big can those reactions be?” I asked Andy Grotelueschen, who was in grad school at Trinity Rep when I was there as the Director of Production. He was very helpful. He’s the person I could ask, and I’d get a multifaceted answer with a lot of “If this is happening, then you can do this kind of thing.” In a way, I was getting a graduate level acting class.

Ethan Lipton, Leigh Silverman, Ruth E. Sternberg, and Sunny Min-Sook
opening night photo by Rebecca J Michelson

In rehearsal—did you ever have any instincts to step into a stage management role? Or did you strictly separate yourself from them?

Most of my entrances are down the aisle, appearing to be coming from the tech booth in the back. In the rehearsal room, that meant I was coming from the area where stage management was set up. So, I usually located myself near the stage management team, but I tried not to make any recommendations. There were times when I was asked to help navigate how The Public worked with the stage management team, which I was happy to do. I think the navigation was more about, I want to get this done; who should I talk to?

They were lucky to have you there.

It’s a really good stage management team. [Shelley Miles, Production Stage Manager; Caroline Englander, Stage Manager; Alex Luong, Stage Manager; and PAs Guadalupe Chavezmalagon and Chaz Strickland.]

Thank God, because it’s a huge show. The changeover at intermission was a big one. It looked like a very big crew.

There are two stage managers backstage, two PAs, a head scenery person, two props people, three on the audio team, six on costumes, one on makeup. Plus. two follow spot operators and a light board operator.

It’s thrilling to get to see so many people working on a single production. Not to mention the large cast of 15, and 10 onstage musicians.

It’s a gigantic show. And they reconfigured the theater to an alleyway configuration, [with the audience on two sides of the stage], which then changed everybody’s access to backstage from stage right only.

Playing a stage manager onstage takes you a full circle to how your professional career began. Where did you make your professional debut?

I started at Trinity Rep as a PA under Adrian Hall in 1984. After a year or so, Marion Simon, Adrian’s producer, gave me my Equity card, and told me, “You can stage manage Life and Limb, [by Keith Reddin], and if you don’t screw it up, you can be a stage manager here forever. But if you screw it up, we’ll make you an ASM for the rest of the season and then you’re out.”

A little pressure for a stage management debut.

Luckily, I didn’t screw up. I continued stage managing and followed Adrian to the Dallas Theater Center for a season, then back to Trinity Rep in 1995 as the Production Manager. Oskar Eustis had taken over as Artistic Director in 1994. He promoted me to Director of Production a year later.

All on-the-job training?

Yes, for most of my life. My mother ran a children’s theater touring company when I was a kid. I toured with the company, earning a dollar per performance in the 1960s. She ran a settlement house in the Bronx, running a teen theater, an adult community theater, and a children’s theater program. Then we moved to Pennsylvania where she continued it there. She ended up going back to school for her master’s and next taught at Penn State, and later at Hunter College for 27 years. I was surrounded by theater throughout my childhood.

Is that how stage management began for you?

One of the tours was called Magic Wand Productions, and at The Cape May Playhouse in New Jersey, there was a trap door in the stage. We were doing Rumpelstiltskin, and at the end, he had to melt and disappear. The original staging hid him under this glittery gold blanket, but I pointed out the trapdoor and tried to talk my mother into using it. So, yes, I was interested in helping to stage manage from a very young age. In college at Penn State, my family’s mantra was “Nobody can make a living in the theater.” I ended up getting a degree in business administration with a minor in economics. Though while I was in school, I volunteered to stage manage, but because I wasn’t a theater major, I got the projects nobody else wanted. I took one stage management class in college. I got a B. Even so, I liked it and knew I wanted to do it. After graduation, I moved to Houston, following my fiancé in the Young Company at the Alley Theatre. I got hired to work in the Alley box office by day and I was house managing and bartending at other theatres at night. I did that for about a year and a half, and then the PA job at Trinity was announced.

Which went from Artistic Director Adrian Hall to Oskar Eustis, who then left Trinity Rep for The Public Theater in 2005. And I take it, he invited you along? That must’ve been an easy YES!

He told me, “I don’t want to shake things up, but I would really like you there.” So, we left it to be a slow transition. But then, while driving home to visit my parents for Christmas, Oskar called and said, “The guy who has your job at The Public just quit. Can you start right away?” The job had combined the Director of Facilities Management with the Director of Production, and after seven years, I was promoted to Production Executive, which included running the General Management department, Operations, and Production. In 2015, the year of Hamilton, the theater grew very quickly, and there was enough money to hire people to do those other jobs, leaving me to focus solely on Production. A relief. It was a huge job. A big place. So many productions going on at once.

As someone who’s gone from stage management to Production Executive, has stage management changed much since when you first started?

The technology has changed a lot. When I started, if a sound effect was needed, the stage manager went to a collection of vinyl sound effects records and made cues by recording onto a reel-to-reel tape and then splicing it together, and you’d run the sound cues in performance. Also, calling the light cues had to be much slower and spread out because the light board had only a two-scene preset with sliders. You could only preload one cue at a time, and it was all manual. You couldn’t call a cue before the light board operator had a chance to set it up. The computer light board changed everything. Suddenly, you could do cues that faded over a minute. You couldn’t do that manually. So, while the technology has changed a lot, the idea of how you manage it hasn’t changed that much. Basically, the question as a stage manager is the same: what do you need to be able to do this? Those answers have changed, but I don’t think the management of it has.

Looking back at your total career at The Public, what are some of your favorite memories and highlights?

I think my favorite show that I worked on was Hair in the Park. Probably because I had such a connection to that show as a young person. We’ve done so many great shows: Fun Home, Suffs. I loved Kicking a Dead Horse.

I beg your pardon?

Sam Shepard’s play about a man riding a horse in the desert, and his horse dies. It was a one-man play starring Stephen Rea. During the show, he dug a grave for the horse, and at one point the dead horse was rolled into it. Working on that play was just fantastic. And the props department did a beautiful job making a horse that could roll. I had no idea it was illegal to buy horse hide in the United States. A donor gave us a family horse blanket that we were able to turn into the covering for the taxidermy figure of the horse that was rolled into the hole.

I love that out of all the highlights, this one nears the top.

The highlight was working with Sam Shepard and Stephen Rea. The highlights are the people that I’ve gotten to work with: my relationship with Oskar, the many people who are doing the work they do because they believe that theater brings change to the world. Which I believe firmly. Being able to work with such people, these are the highlights.

Happy to hear that The Seat of Our Pants has been extended to December 7. Congratulations on that. Do you see yourself acting onstage again?

We shall see. Who knows what will come next.

May your philosophy for retirement (of doing new projects you’ve never done before) keep you going for many more years to come.

                                                                                                                                               

Performances for The Seat of Our Pants continue to Dec. 7, 2025

Gregory Fletcher is an author, theater professor, playwright, director, and stage manager. His publishing credits include a craft book on playwriting entitled Shorts and Briefs, as well as a collection entitled A Playwright’s Dozen: 13 short plays. Other publishing includes two YA novels (Other People’s Crazy, and Other People’s Drama), 2 novellas in the series Inclusive Bedtime Stories, 2 short stories in The Night Bazaar series, and five essays. Website, Facebook, Instagram.