Selected Praise

The Torch Bearer, a compelling, novel-in-progress, features a narrator – an actor, who “works in chaos theory” and is attracted to danger--whose complicated relationship to class and women is explored through compression, juxtaposition and sharply observed scenes. From its backstory hunting scene in which a six-year old boy asks his father “what is the opposite of pretend?”--the father initiating him into the mind of a predator, explaining that “even stalking is a meditation”--hunting becomes one of the novel’s  presiding metaphors. Given its exploration of chance, causality and chaos, the improvisor’s “yes, and...” strategy, I look forward to seeing how this novel continues to unfold.

—Donna Masini, Judge of 2022 Levis Prize in Fiction      

These balancing acts — between rationalism and faith, cynicism and joy — shape the play [Number of People] and its central character. … By writing a one-man play, in which a single character conveys his mounting disorientation directly to the audience, she has eliminated the so-called Fourth Wall, the tacit understanding that the audience and the actors inhabit different worlds, making their experiences comfortably separate. As Gold speaks to the audience, its members become part of his experience, and the intimacy of an individual voice renders Gold’s distress particularly powerful.

—Jessica Reaves, New York Times

[Number of People is a] brilliant piece of work by Emilie Beck. The message of it is that the living must carry the story of the dead. And if you kill the living, or the living don’t perpetuate the story, it furthers and initiates the killing all over again.

—Edward Asner, San Jose Mercury News interview    

[Sovereign Body is a] dramatic poem about strife that delicately lays out its case through a blend of realism and surrealism. Sometimes no matter where or who you are, the sky simply falls. And that is what unites us, across eons and continents: That we all live with this capriciousness of destiny.

—Steven Leigh Morris, LA Weekly  

Sovereign Body is rhythm driven: the overlapping, beautifully natural evocation of human speech produces a flow of quick, medium, and slow movements not unlike what audiences might experience at the symphony. These are doubled by intentionally choreographed sequences of household activities and re-doubled by the layering of complex ideas about mortality, poetry, family, and political discourse. Sovereign Body is both open-hearted and intellectually rigorous. It is about physical, mental, and emotional health, the palliative power of a loving family, and the frightening difference between that which we experience in concert with others and that which we must face alone.

—Toni Press-Coffman, Literary Manager  

Trace is fearless, passionate, and relentlessly truthful.

—Lindsay Allbaugh, Co-Artistic Director, Center Theater Theatre Group    

Beck has long served as Literary Manager for The Theatre @ Boston Court, while directing a number of first-rate productions of other writers. The whole point of dramaturgy is that the audience never apprehends anything you have done, but Beck has been midwifing so many substantial works by extraordinary playwrights, she must have had a great deal to do with the successful delivery.

—Myron Maisel, The Hollywood Reporter

To work with Emilie Beck is to work with a genius of story and story structure. My play Both And (A Play About Laughing While Black) which was developed and produced with her at Boston Court Theatre would not be what it is today without her incisive reflections, her deep understanding of story, her intuitive artistry, and her gentle yet clear way of giving feedback.  

Emilie Beck is simply brilliant at what she does. It was an honor and a gift to have my story pass through her wildly talented and razor sharp mind, her intuitive and incisive understanding of story and structure and her wise and compassionate heart.   She took the time to truly see and understand where I was coming from and what story I wanted to tell; she met me where I was at and built a bridge with her feedback to help evolve my story into the best version of itself. She did not insist on her own way, but gave gems of wisdom, insight, reflection and feedback. She was an incredible collaborator and thinker. It would be a gift to work with her again and again.

—Carolyn Ratteray, Playwright and Performer