The Stage Manager Takes the Stage
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.
Ethan Lipton knew exactly who he was picturing for the role of Mr. Fitzpatrick, the no-nonsense stage manager struggling to hold together an unruly cast, in his musical adaptation of Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth.
“Ethan kept saying, ‘I want someone like Ruth Sternberg,’” recalled Leigh Silverman, Lipton’s frequent collaborator and director of The Seat of Our Pants, his jazzy spin on Wilder’s meta-theatrical masterwork. “‘Someone who doesn’t feel like an actor.’”
The pair continued talking through casting options ahead of the show’s world premiere at the Public Theater, where it runs through November 30. But no one felt right.
Finally, Silverman said: “Why don’t we just ask Ruth?”
A venerated figure at the Public, Sternberg kept the company’s six-theater complex running for 18 seasons before her retirement in 2023—first as Director of Production and Facility Management for seven years, then 11 years as Production Executive. Warm but matter-of-fact, exacting yet unassuming, Sternberg was instantly recognizable around the building for her typical outfit of jeans, T-shirt (maybe emblazoned with quippy text), and a several-logos-old Public production department hoodie.
“I was skeptical,” admitted Sternberg of her pivot to acting at the age of 66. “But I knew it would be fun. And I really wanted to find out if I could do it.”
Now Sternberg is making her acting debut on the Newman Theater stage, once home to Hamilton and Fun Home—two of the close to 200 shows she shepherded to success from the opposite side of the footlights.
One advantage of both being and playing a stage manager: her costume is the same.
“I was skeptical,” admitted Sternberg of her pivot to acting at the age of 66. “But I knew it would be fun. And I really wanted to find out if I could do it.”
Sternberg first arrived at the Public in 2005, joining artistic director Oskar Eustis after his move from Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, RI, where the two had worked together for a decade. As the bridge between administration and production, Sternberg supervised all elements of a show’s budget and creation across multiple departments.
“Despite the enormous pressures of a job that big, Ruth never lost sight of what was most important: the people, and the art,” said Leandro Zaneti, a former assistant production manager at the Public who worked closely with Sternberg. “She is like a river—always moving, always connecting everything and everyone around her, and, like a river, able to move mountains.”
Lipton had worked closely with Sternberg on his sci-fi song cycle The Outer Space, staged at Joe’s Pub in 2017 (also directed by Silverman). Earlier this year, the two caught up at an opening night party. Shortly afterward, an offer arrived in her inbox—no audition required.
Sternberg’s partner, Liz Rosier, a longtime agent and manager, was astonished.
“She was like: ‘You got a straight offer?’” Sternberg recalled with a laugh. “‘That’s crazy!’”
Ruth Sternberg in front of the Public Theater, her professional home for nearly two decades.
Acting had never been part of the plan. Sternberg attempted performing as a child, but gave it up quickly due to stage fright. In 2009, she did submit for a guest spot as “Lesbian Stage Manager” on Law & Order: SVU, but was passed over.
And, of course, she was retired from the theater. Sternberg hung up her hoodie at the Public in 2023, planning to spend more time at her home in the northern Catskills. But it didn’t stick.
“For five months I was retired, and I had the best garden you’ve ever seen,” said Sternberg. “And then I was bouncing off the walls.”
She began taking on freelance gigs, always on the condition that they offered an unfamiliar challenge. Sternberg production managed two shows at the New York Botanical Garden: a Nightmare Before Christmas–themed light trail and a Van Gogh–inspired drone show. She consulted for a summer stock theater in Dennis, MA. Then the call came in for The Seat of Our Pants.
Mr. Fitzpatrick plays a small but pivotal role in Wilder’s apocalyptic epic, intervening whenever the actors break character and wander off-script. As soon as the maid Sabina, actually an actress named Miss Somerset (here played by Tony nominee Micaela Diamond), begins to rant that she “doesn’t understand a word” of this play, keep one eye on the house-right aisle—Fitz is probably halfway down the steps.
And when the Fortune Teller (Ally Bonino) refuses to get back on track in the play’s second act, Fitz is ready to throw hands.
“Why,” Fitz rages, “do actors always think everything is about them?”
Such friction is not unfamiliar territory for Sternberg, though she can’t necessarily endorse her character’s methods.
“I have dealt with those actors, and I have probably said those exact words,” she smiled. “But not to the actor’s face.”
Still, the role has helped Sternberg appreciate the work required to remain prepped and focused as an actor, in ways she couldn’t recognize from the other side of the table.
“I always thought, as a production manager and as a stage manager, that you put in more hours than the actors do,” she said. “But that’s just in the room.”
Her own character work was simplified, Sternberg admits, by a clear directive from Silverman: just play Fitz as yourself. Just be Ruth Sternberg.
“It fills me with joy to see Ruth onstage at the Public playing at being what she actually was, the backbone of the Public,” said Oskar Eustis. “It takes a collective to make theater, but individuals don’t dissolve into that collective—they become more brightly, purely themselves. Just like Ruth is doing every night in The Seat of Our Pants.”
Being herself, Sternberg clarified, has not extended to weighing in on production decisions. Though she has been tempted.
“Sometimes I want to say, ‘If you did that a little differently…’” she laughs. “But it’s not my place. I am now the talent.”