Tanya Berezin

Tanya Berezin (March 25, 1941 – November 29, 2023) was an American actress, co-founder and artistic director of Circle Repertory Company, and acting educator. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, she attended Boston University College of Fine Arts, where Faye Dunaway was her roommate. In the 1960s she trained in the Meisner Technique under acting teacher Jim Tuttle, and in 1963 she relocated to New York City to begin her performing career.

During her time performing in summer stock, Berezin met and married Rob Thirkield, who introduced her to New York's experimental theater scene, including La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club and Caffe Cino. Through Thirkield she also came to know Marshall W. Mason and Lanford Wilson, both of whom would become central figures in her professional life. At La MaMa in the 1960s she appeared in several productions, among them Wilson's first full-length play, Rimers of Eldridge, directed by the author and featuring Michael Warren Powell; Spring Play by William M. Hoffman, which also featured Harvey Keitel; and The Sand Castle, or There is a Tavern in the Town, or Harry can Dance, another Wilson work directed by Mason. Berezin and Thirkield divorced in 1977, and she married actor Mark Wilson in 1987.

In 1969, Berezin co-founded the Circle Repertory Company alongside Wilson, Mason, and Thirkield, launching it as the Circle Theater Company in a loft on Broadway on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Thirkield, an heir to the Thomas Leeming Company pharmaceutical fortune, provided substantial financial support to the organization until his death in July 1986. The company relocated in 1974 to Sheridan Square in Greenwich Village, opening there with a production of Tennessee Williams' Battle of Angels in which Berezin starred. Reviewing that production in The New York Times, Walter Kerr wrote that Berezin was "a revelation" and that "there is scarcely a finer performance in New York just now." Berezin served as artistic director of Circle Rep from 1987 to 1994, during which time the theater premiered works by Craig Lucas, Larry Kramer, Paula Vogel, and Jon Robin Baitz, among others. Her productions in that role included Wilson's Redwood Curtain and Vogel's The Baltimore Waltz, the latter being Vogel's first play. Vogel later said of Berezin, "I would not exist if it weren't for Tanya Berezin." Berezin was also devoted to Circle Rep's Lab, a protected artistic workshop environment modeled on Caffe Cino, where playwrights, actors, and directors could experiment and develop their work.

As a stage actress, Berezin appeared on Broadway between 1980 and 1983 in two Lanford Wilson plays, Angels Fall and Fifth of July, as well as in William M. Hoffman's As Is. Her work in Angels Fall earned praise from New York magazine, which described her performance as "a dazzling balancing act with superiority and edginess." Angels Fall received a Tony Award for Best Play nomination in 1983, and she received a Drama Desk Award Outstanding Revival nomination in 1985. Her Off-Broadway credits included Sympathetic Magic, The Mound Builders, Balm in Gilead, Battle of Angels, Serenading Louie, Caligula, The Beaver Coat, and Mary Stuart, among other productions. In 1976 she won an Obie Award for her role in the premiere production of Wilson's The Mound Builders. Reviewing her performance as Queen Elizabeth in Friedrich Schiller's Mary Stuart in The Nation, Harold Clurman singled out Berezin for special praise, noting her "steely calculations, dark resentments and self-determined and regal loneliness" and describing the portrayal as "depicted with incisive psychological understanding."

On screen, Berezin appeared in the theatrical films A Little Sex (1982), Awakenings (1990), and He Said, She Said (1991). Her television work included a recurring role as Constance on St. Elsewhere from 1985 to 1988, guest appearances on The Equalizer (1986) and Spenser: For Hire (1987), two recurring Trial Judge roles on Law & Order — alternately as Rosalyn Lenz and Janine Pate — from 1991 to 2004, and guest appearances on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (2000) and Law & Order: Criminal Intent (2002). Beginning in 1994, Berezin also taught and coached actors for theater, film, and television. She died of lung cancer in San Francisco, California on November 29, 2023, at the age of 82.