The Tony-nominated playwright Heidi Schreck (English, theatre arts, '09) is bringing one of Anton Chekhov's classic plays to life on Broadway. 

In collaboration with director Lila Neugebauer, Schreck is staging a production of Uncle Vanya at the Lincoln Center Theatre in April, according to Playbill. The play, originally written in 1897, will star Steve Carell and Alison Pill. The New York Times Style Magazine describes it as “a singularly psychologically destabilizing piece of theater that’s now being seen anew as a study of post-Covid paralysis, not to mention the existential dread of watching your life slip away by the spoonful.”  

In 2019, Schreck was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her play What the Constitution Means to Me, as well as nominated for two Tony Awards: Best Play and Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play. 

In 2018, Schreck spoke with Oregon Quarterly about her academic journey at the University of Oregon. Before attending the UO in the late '80s, she intended to become an environmental lawyer. But things quickly changed when she arrived. 

“The first week I landed in Eugene, I saw a call for auditions for a play called Red Noses,” she remembers. “I fell in love with acting and the theater department. I stopped being prelaw after my first term and did a play every term after that. I might not have gone into theater at all if they hadn’t converted me.”

— Photo by Tess Mayer for The Interval