Playwright Theresa Rebeck is no stranger to New York stages. The Pulitzer-Prize finalist is well known for plays like Ominium Gatherum, Bad Dates and last season’s The Scene, and she will be making her Broadway debut this fall with MTC’s production of Mauritius. Emily Shooltz spoke with Rebeck about her career as a writer and the unique world of philately (stamp collecting) that inspired this fierce and funny play.

EVS: What was it that first attracted you to theater? Did you always know you wanted to be a playwright?

TR: I grew up in Cincinnati, and I have to say those student matinees really did their job with me. Sometimes people ask that question, “What’s the first production that made an impression on you?” and I can actually answer: it was Tartuffe, when I was about eight. I acted a lot when I was young, and I was also writing a lot, and there was a point when I thought: “A plus B… theater plus writing equals playwright.” I spent a lot of time not even knowing how to begin, because in Cincinnati, there wasn’t really a container for an idea like that. After college I did a little work as a journalist, then went to Brandeis to study Literature, and while I was there I switched over to the Theater department.

EVS: I find it fascinating that you have a PhD in Victorian Melodrama. Do you feel that having studied those plays influences your own writing at all?

TR: I think it does influence my work, but in ways that aren’t immediately apparent—people don’t usually think “epic melodrama” when they see my plays. But I fell in love with their galloping narratives and sturdy, even passionate structure and commitment to story. I think they’re very beautiful, strange, surreal plays. I realize that they’re depleted—in terms of psychology and language—but there are some astonishing achievements in the structural and expressionist elements of the storytelling in those plays. I think my work in theater is more committed to forward motion and neoclassical ideas of story than many contemporary playwrights, perhaps because of the time I’ve spent tangling with those old melodramas.

EVS: You’ve gone back and forth between writing for theater, film and television. Does it feel schizop hrenic to work that way, or do the different mediums stimulate different parts of your brain?

TR: I believe that some people have used the word “peripatetic” to describe it, but that’s not how I experience it. I’m curious about the different places writing invites me to explore, and I also feel no need to repeat myself. In fact, I feel a little impatient whenever I think I might be repeating myself. It makes me anxious. At my core I really am a playwright, I think that’s clear, but for example I’m deeply curious about fiction now; I have a novel coming out in the spring. (It’s titled Three Girls and Their Brother, and it’s being brought out by Shaye Areheart, at Random House.) But I have to say, as of now it seems I’m terrible at third-person narrative, because I don’t know who’s talking! So my novel is told t hrough a series of first-person narrators.

EVS: That’s fascinating—the playwright in you peeking t hrough. Where did the inspiration for Mauritius come from?

TR: I found pictures of those stamps from Mauritius—the one and two penny Post Office stamps. I was casually trolling online; sometimes I avoid work by just typing things in and seeing what comes up. So, truthfully, I don’t know how I landed on the page, but there were pictures of stamps from a 19th century Spanish lord’s collection. They were going on auction—at least purportedly, who knows what’s true on the Internet. Anyway, there were a lot of very beautiful stamps on the page, and then I noticed you could click on these two stamps from Mauritius and the price showed up, and I thought, “Can that be true?” The catalogue price listed them as being worth something like $1.5 million a piece. I didn’t have very much information, but I was electrified by the idea that a stamp could be worth that much.

Then I started buying books and going to the library and trying to talk to people who were serious stamp collectors. I did a lot of research into the history of precious stamps, into philately. The lore that surrounds them was very moving to me; they become almost mythic. I found myself falling under their spell—they’re physically beautiful, and they’re so frail, and they have this mysterious and haunting history. I was particularly moved by the fact that it’s the errors or flaws in the stamps that make them valuable. So, the play actually started with my fascination with those stamps.

EVS: The people in the play are also flawed in different ways—were philosophical questions about the relative worth of people versus these tiny scraps of paper on your mind when you were writing the play?

TR: Yes, that’s very much at the center of the play. I became curious about what people’s hunger in life is for, how collectors place their hunger onto the collectible and further, the different versions of that. The hunger and disquiet of the self is different in different people, and I began to see the stamps as something that all different kinds of hunger could swirl around.

EVS: At the same time, the play is very funny. Did you set out to write a comedy, or did the circumstances of the play dictate the humor—the fact that in some ways it’s ludicrous that these tiny slips of paper are worth millions of dollars?

TR: I’m someone who becomes extremely impatient if there’s not a good laugh right around the corner. Even when I write a tragedy there are usually an alarming number of jokes, considering you’re in a tragedy. So I was working out the story, for Mauritius, and the stakes kept getting higher, and then I spent a lot of time thinking about Moliére and how very funny and painful those plays can be at the same time. That was in my mind, that union of opposites. And that was where, for me, the delight of the play started to come in. Everybody’s hungry and scrabbling and desperate and crazy for those stamps, and then at some point it’s, you know, “Maybe we should have a margarita!”

EVS: Have you done much work on the play since the Huntington production?

TR: [ Director] Doug Hughes and I continue to poke at the script. He was up here in Vermont a few weeks ago, and we went t hrough and really combed over every single line. He’s got an exceptionally good ear. I don’t see any major changes coming, but there are few places that we’re still puzzling out.

EVS: You’ve had many plays produced in New York, but this will be your Broadway debut. Is it different preparing for a Broadway premiere?

TR: I have to tell you, particularly because of Doug, the process has been invigorating, and the team at MTC is crackerjack. And what a cast. Not only are they all truly brilliant actors; they’re all funny. People keep saying, “You’re going to Broadway, Theresa!” and for a while I was thinking, “What do you mean Broadway?” But now I’m starting to feel like, well it really is a big deal. Broadway. It’s exceptional, to be here; it really is.