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August 2023: Judith Rousuck '69

Judith Wynn Rousuck ’69
Judith Rousuck ’69 graduated from Wellesley College and served as the long-time theater critic for The Baltimore Sun. She can be heard these days reporting on theater on WYPR, Baltimore’s NPR station. She has written her first novel which publishes this November and combines two of her loves: letters and dogs. Without giving too much away, Please Write centers on a recently widowed artist’s alter ego who corresponds with a pair of literate terriers whose owner’s life is unraveling. 

You’re a theater critic. If you were reviewing a play about your time at Laurel, what would be the headline of your review? Can you give us a capsule review? 
My Fair Laurel — Coming-of-Age Musical Earns Well-Deserved Laurels
 
Hairspray meets Hamlet in My Fair Laurel, a tuneful, engrossing, Broadway-bound musical about a high school girl finding her way in the world. From the opening song, “Good Morning, Laurel School” to the rousing finale, “Take My Hand, I’m No Stranger at Laurel School,” this clever collage of musicals incorporates elements from such classics as Kismet and My Fair Lady as well as Hairspray. The show has everything a theatergoer could wish for: Green costumes, a giant alligator puppet, and a happy ending. Best of all, unlike that other coming-of-age story, Hamlet, no one dies in My Fair Laurel. To the contrary, the protagonist’s spirit soars and brings the audience’s spirit right along with it. This critic couldn’t recommend My Fair Laurel more highly.

After Laurel, you went to Wellesley College, graduating summa cum laude in three years with a major prize in poetry under your belt, and then you received your master’s in journalism from Columbia University. Did you always want to be a reporter? Did you have any role models in journalism, which was a very male-dominated arena?
I began writing poetry when I was in elementary school, but even then I knew I couldn’t make a living as a poet. Being a reporter sounded like a good way to get paid for writing, and working in a newsroom looked like fun. True, role models were few and far between. I did have two, however, both named Lois. The first was Lois Lane — granted, rather two-dimensional. The second was my godmother, Lois Baumoel, who was a theater and movie critic for local and national publications. Lois B. definitely showed me that journalism could be a woman’s game.

You got your start at The Cleveland Press. Tell us what that was like and how you became a theater critic?
Although The Press was my first newspaper job, it wasn’t my first job in the media. I did my Laurel School senior project at WCLV. After I graduated from Wellesley, I went back to Cleveland and WCLV offered me a full-time job, primarily editing the station guide. I stayed with WCLV until the following summer, when I got an internship at The Press and was lucky enough to be on the critics’ staff.
 
My early reviews in The Press made me realize I could combine my desire to be a journalist with my deep love of the arts, and theater in particular. I entered the Columbia School of Journalism determined to become a critic.The Baltimore Sun initially hired me as a general assignment arts reporter; a decade later, when the theater critic’s job opened up, I was fortunate to be in the right place at the right time.
 
I should also credit Laurel’s legendary drama teacher, Rosaneil Schenk. Mrs. Schenk not only reinforced my love of theater, but she also — gently — taught me which side of the footlights I belonged on. Suffice it to say, she relegated me to an “offstage voice” in my class’ production of “Alice in Wonderland.” Far from harboring any ill will about this, I remain forever grateful to Mrs. Schenk for instilling a lifelong admiration for actors. I never, ever watch a performer and think, “Oh, I could do that.” To the contrary, I am in awe.
Given the media landscape now, when news outlets and reporters come and go, the fact that you spent 33 years at The Baltimore Sun, 23 of them as the theater critic is amazing. What are some of your favorite memories of that time?
I reviewed more than 3,000 plays for The Sun, so there were many highlights. To name a few:
  •  Top of the list: Interviewing Stephen Sondheim. It took many years of correspondence to secure this interview, and it was well worth the wait. Plus, he wrote me a beautiful note after the article was in print. 
  • A three-year series on the journey that the Baltimore-centric musical, Hairspray, took from screen to stage, from cult film to Tony Award-winning Broadway musical.
  • Many interviews with August Wilson, whom I first met in 1982 at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, when he was working on Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Wilson continued to develop plays at this new-play laboratory, and I, subsequently, spent more than two decades on the faculty of the O’Neill’s National Critics Institute. Our paths crossed many times.
Among other memorable interviews: Eubie Blake, Cary Grant, Joel Grey, Derek Jacobi, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Ian McKellen, Dolly Parton, Harold Prince, Paula Vogel, Wendy Wasserstein, John Waters… And, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the dog who played Sandy in a national touring production of Annie. Actually, I interviewed two dogs because Sandy had an understudy — oops, make that an “underdog.”

Since 2007, you have been the theater critic for WYPR, Baltimore’s NPR station. Now you aren’t just writing your reviews, you are doing them on the air. What do you like about using your voice in this way? 
Radio — like my job on Maryland Public Television in the 1980s — has a touch of performing, and that’s not a bad exercise for a critic. It adds humility. This is especially true because my reviews are done live, in an interview format. Interestingly, I find that my neutral Midwestern accent works very well on the air in Baltimore. Compared to a thick “Bawlamer” accent, hon, my voice is almost exotic!

In college, your senior thesis was a novel. And now you have written Please Write, which will be published in November. What kind of reader did you have in mind when you were writing this novel? And what do you hope readers will take away from Please Write?
The book’s ideal readers are dog lovers and people coping with hardship and loss. A few early readers have told me the book has helped them through some tough times. That is enormously gratifying to me. I should also say that parts of the book are funny, and almost all of the advance readers have mentioned laughing out loud. That’s also gratifying.

What surprised you about writing your novel and how did you go about getting a publisher? 
I spent more than a decade on Please Write, and it lived in my head for a long time before that. Finding it difficult to work without deadlines after I left The Sun, I joined a writing group, where I had to submit pages regularly, and the members generously allowed me to do two complete drafts of the book. I also had more time during COVID, when I was only on the radio once a month, mostly reviewing plays that were streamed on TV or online.

I loved the freedom of writing fiction. And I loved spending time with the book’s characters. One of my main goals for this book is to give readers the joy of also spending time with these characters.
 
Given the genre-defying nature of Please Write, I fully expected to send out at least 100 queries to agents and publishers. Less than a dozen queries into this process, on a Thursday in November, I emailed the manuscript to Bancroft Press’ Bruce Bortz, who had published books by several of my Baltimore Sun colleagues. The next day, he emailed me saying that he was “a bit wary of epistolary novels” and didn’t know if he could suspend his disbelief about dogs writing letters. But he set up a Zoom meeting for Monday, and his first words were: “I have to apologize for my email. I love your book.”

Why did you choose to tell the charming story of dogs Winslow and Zippy through old-fashioned letter writing with their very human Grandma Vivienne and what makes canines, or at least yours, good correspondents? 
The epistolary format combines two things I love dearly — dogs and letter writing. I fear that the latter is becoming a dying art. Emails and text messages can’t replace the individual touch and heartfelt emotion that goes into a personal letter. So much of what we know about history comes from letters. I don’t know how future historians and biographers will fare without them.

Also, it was vital that the dogs in the book be able to communicate through language. Talking dogs were too much of a stretch and too cutesy. Literate canines, on the other hand, had the whimsical quality I was going for, and their letters also allowed me to reveal Winslow, Zippy, and Grandma Vivienne’s separate personalities through their distinct writing styles.

In a press blurb for the book cover, Martha Teichner, CBS News Correspondent, writes: “The perfect book for all those people who’ve gone on trips and secretly wished they could phone their dogs.”  ​​What trip have you taken when you wished you could phone your dog? And what is it about dogs that inspires us to confide in them?
Just about every trip. I have a Boston Terrier named Juno, and any time I’m out of town and see a Boston, I’d like to phone Juno and tell her I ran into one of her relatives. I think we confide in our pets because most of them are excellent listeners, and they give us unconditional love.

Over the years you’ve taught writing and theater at Johns Hopkins University, Goucher College and at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s Critics Institute. What are some of the key lessons you hope your students took away? 
Lesson 1: There’s never a reason, or a need, to be mean-spirited. This holds for real life, too.
Lesson 2: Opinion — whether you “liked” a play — is the least important part of a review. Analysis — whether the play was any good, and why — is the most important.
Lesson 3: A review should strive to answer three questions: What were the theater artists trying to do? How well did they do it? Was it worth doing?

The Judith Wynn Rousuck Journalism Award at Laurel was established through a bequest by your mother. What advice would you give to Laurel students interested in writing and journalism?
Read as much as possible. When you find something you admire, try to figure out how the writer wrote it, i.e., how it’s structured, why certain word choices were made, etc. Also, do as much writing, in as many genres, as possible — but make it real writing, not emails or texts.

You’re browsing in a bookstore.  What section(s) would we find you in?
Theater, dogs, fiction.

On a typical weekend, where would we find you?
At the theater.

Anything else you’d like to add?
Laurel School changed my life for the better. Readers, look for a mention of this in the Acknowledgements at the back of Please Write. You can find more information about the book at www.jwynnrousuck.com. I hope there will be a book event in Cleveland where I can connect with Laurel alumnae and friends!
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