Amy Glazer’s full-throttle life
Originally published by the San Jose Mercury News June 18, 2011
By Karen D’Souza
Amy Glazer does not need coffee to get amped up in the morning. She goes to bed very late, after theater rehearsals (she’s a director), and rises very early to answer student emails (she’s also a professor), but she is accustomed to running at full throttle.
“I wake up with a great deal of intensity about what has to happen, and then it does,” Glazer says in her usual speedy patois. “I’m all jazzed. My image of myself is the guy in the circus spinning all the plates on the pencils. It’s rare to have a moment to just stop and breathe.”
Glazer is the total package: a gifted director (“The Scene,” “Shining City”), a power schmoozer, a devoted mother and all-around high-voltage individual. A Bay Area theater stalwart who teaches theater and film at San Jose State University and lives in the Oakland hills, she frequently directs at SF Playhouse, where she is currently rehearsing “Tigers Be Still,” a quirky new coming-of-age dramedy by Kim Rosenstock (whose “Fly-By-Night” is about to debut at TheatreWorks, in its West Coast premiere). She’s also an up-and-coming indie film director, and she can work a room like a shark circling a tank, which came in handy trolling the red carpet at Cannes recently with “Seducing Charlie Barker,” her film version of “The Scene.”
“She is a powerhouse,” says Susi Damilano, artistic director of SF Playhouse. “If Amy is on your side, you will be on the winning team. She is so passionate about everything she does there simply is no stopping her.”
Glazer, 57, talks fast, thinks fast, commutes badly (she gets distracted) and expects everyone to keep up. And while most directors are so busy with their own projects that they never have time to go to the theater, Glazer makes a point of seeing plays several nights a week.
“I love her energy,” notes Rick Lombardo, artistic director of San Jose Rep, where Glazer will helm “The Understudy” next year. “As an ex-New Yorker, it’s so comfortable to talk to someone who speaks even faster than I do,” he adds.
When the going gets rough in rehearsals, Glazer tells the story of giving birth to her son. She didn’t have time to go to birthing class because she was directing at TheatreWorks; so she sent her husband. She was determined not to go into labor until the show opened (“Marvin’s Room”); so she didn’t.
“We opened Saturday night, and I went into labor Sunday morning,” she recalls. “Once you push out a baby with no drugs, nothing will stop you. You do what you have to do.”
An ardent champion of new work, Glazer has made her name with bittersweet social satires from hot playwrights such as Theresa Rebeck, Stephen Belber (“Drifting Elegant,” which she also made into a film) and Rebecca Gilman (“Spinning Into Butter,” “The Crowd You’re in With”). Glazer was an associate artist at San Francisco’s Magic Theatre for many years, but these days she is equally focused on teaching at San Jose State as on directing.
“I’m at a point in my life where it’s not just a gig,” she says. “I work on plays that are meaningful to me, stories that are close to me.”
She grew up in a showbiz family in ’50s Miami Beach (her uncle was Oscar-winning producer Sidney Glazier), where trading puns with Mel Brooks and Zero Mostel was as common as skipping rope. She and her brother once got kicked off the set of “The Producers” because they hit actor Dick Shawn in the head while swinging from the rafters. (Her brother Mitch Glazer is riffing on their childhood for the in-development TV series “Magic City.”)
“Growing up in that world definitely skewed my sense of humor, which is a little twisted,” she says with a naughty giggle, “much to the chagrin of many bureaucrats I have met.”
Indeed, Glazer does not suffer fools gladly, and that can rub some people the wrong way.
“She will never settle,” Damilano says. “She is brutally honest, opinionated (until she changes her mind), completely dedicated to the playwright, to such a degree that it can be annoying (she’ll never let an actor mistake a comma for a period!). And just when you think you want to strangle her, she belts out a full belly laugh at herself and exposes her vulnerability, and you realize she is human. Everything she does is fueled by love. Every critique is honest and intended to help you improve, and the standards she holds for the art in theater and everyone around her are only slightly lower than standards she holds for herself. I have to admit I adore Amy Glazer. I love that she pushes us to excel, and I love that she can take a dishing as easily as she can give it, and she never holds a grudge.”
Collaborators say her commitment to new work is unflagging. She has bonded with Rosenstock so deeply, she says, that she feels as if the promising young playwright were her daughter.
“Amy loves writers,” Damilano says. “The first thing she does when she signs on to direct is contact the playwright to talk about the script, casting, set, everything. She completely involves them in every aspect and truly honors their vision.”
While many directors prefer their playwrights to be seen and not heard, so they can put their own stamp on the material, Glazer tries to channel the author’s original intent.
“What comes most naturally to me is getting inside the head of the playwright and capturing that voice as authentically as I can,” Glazer says. “I have also learned that it’s not my job to fix it. I show it to them so they can fix it and hone it and shape it. That’s my bliss.”
Certainly she relishes a challenge, which is one of the reason’s she is committed to forging ahead in both theater and film with equal zest, and perhaps someday making the leap into TV.
“I’m a hybrid,” she says. “I think in both languages now. If I had to choose one over the other, I couldn’t.”
Surprisingly, Glazer takes none of the credit for her supercharged constitution or her relentless work ethic.
“It’s genetic. My energy and my passion come from my mother, Zelda,” she says, her voice catching with emotion. “She was a dynamo. A miracle worker.”
There’s no doubt her sense of exuberance is infectious. Chatting with her makes you want to run up the steps, instead of just climbing them, so you can reach the top a beat faster.
“People say I am tenacious,” she admits, “but really I am just grateful to have this life and this work. Every day I’m grateful.”