Rachel Grossman spent her childhood moving from place to place across the Midwest. With a father who was becoming a doctor, her life revolved around where he would have to move to next for his internship or residency. Though her father was a man of science, he was a professor of theater before deciding to go to medical school. Because of her parents, Grossman was immersed into the world of the arts from a young age. Both with theater and other forms of media.  

“I came from a really artsy family. My dad being a theater professor, and my parents met in graduate school for theater. My mom is an illustrator and a painter. They both love music. So, I always wanted to be a dancer, but it sort of turned into me becoming more involved with theater,” said Grossman.  

She was always heavily involved in the arts, and though it was what she enjoyed doing all throughout school, Grossman decided to study Political Science at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio.  

“Honestly, I was unsure of the entire process of getting into schools. I had a lot of doubts about my abilities. Even though I had the grades to get into the bigger schools like Brown or Dartmouth, I didn’t want to fail. I felt like Kenyon was want I wanted, and now I wouldn’t necessarily agree, but I am still glad I chose to not study theater,” she says when asked about why she chose to attend Kenyon.  

Grossman emphasized that she was unsure of what she wanted to do after college, and with her degree in political science, she still decided to pursue something in theater. Because of her connection with theater, she knew that there were many professional internships that provided housing, which was a big selling point for Grossman in the beginning.  

She said, “I thought, ‘Well, I don’t know what I want to do, but what I could do is get a yearlong internship in theater and go live somewhere that someone else was funding. So, I got an internship at a theater in Baltimore called Center Stage.” 

There, Grossman worked with children in the education department at Center Stage. She attributes this initially internship to kickstarting her desire to continue to work in theater.  

During her twenty year stay in the Baltimore, D.C area, Grossman flourished in her work. She was a cofounder of a theater company in DC called Dog and Pony D.C. The project that she is well known for, and the one that she expresses as her favorite from her career, is a play called “Beertown” that she cowrote alongside sixteen other individuals. The story centers on a fictional town who come together to fill and open a time capsule that represents the town itself.  

“The show starts with a dessert potluck. The audience is invited to bring dessert to share with one another. The audience is the citizenry, and half of the cast is in the audience as members of the town, while the others are on stage. The audience debates and votes on three items that will be placed into the capsule to represent them, and they do the same for what items should be removed,” stated Grossman about the planning of “Beertown”. 

The play is highly interactive, and each show is unique to one another. No showing of “Beertown” is exactly like the last because it is based on the city and audience where it takes place.  

“The show was constantly growing and changing. It was remounted several times in D.C. We also did a community-based tour where we produced it in multiple cities across the country. We would come, get to know the community, work with local artists and organizations to rewrite the show to be reflective of what was happening in that community. Beertown became a stand-in for any town,” Grossman said.  

The theater company was able to sharpen its skills by committing to the project, and the participants were able to change the show from one about the artists to one about the audience. They used “Beertown” as a platform for what was happening in these communities. Thus, bringing to light what divided and brought the audience together.  

Grossman says, “I knew people who saw the show seven or eight times, and they would always remark on how it kept changing. They still remember even the smallest moments, like whether the baseball bat was voted in, and the paint chips weren’t. It was just a really great experience and actually what brought me to Omaha.” 

After being in Omaha for “Beertown”, Grossman chose to move to Omaha because of how much she connected with the people in the city during her previous stay for the show.  

“You really want to get to know the place you’re in, and I really got to know a lot of people in Omaha. I ended up coming to visit, and I got to know theater artists here. I was in a close community with folks at The Rose,” said Grossman.  

In early 2020, she came to Omaha to direct The Diary of Anne Frank at The Rose Theater. Now, Grossman is still heavily involved in the Omaha theater scene. She is directing Othello for Shakespeare on the Green this coming summer, and she has another project called “Tillage” which is going to be a performance with heavy audience participation, like “Beertown”. She is excited for both of her upcoming productions and will be doing more in the following years.  

Grossman ended her statement with, “Theater is not really knowing about theater. It’s about knowing how to look at the world and interpret metaphors, symbols, text, and put together wildly different ideas to get a third, new idea. It’s an art that I get to do for a living, and that’s why I love it.”