Penn alumnus Seth Rozin has come a long way since he staged an Aristophanes play in the Gimbel Gymnasium pool.
Nowadays, Rozin spends most of his time on dry land, directing and writing plays for the InterAct Theatre Company, which he co-founded in 1988, a mere two years after he graduated from the College.
His most recent work, Missing Link, the third play he has written, is set to premiere downtown today.
The script deals with an interfaith couple "catapulted into a crisis of faith" by the death of their only daughter in a plane crash, Rozin explains.
However, the play's director Harriet Power notes that Missing Link is not about plane crashes, but rather about how the parents of a girl killed in a plane crash deal with their loss.
"Seth is tackling a subject where the emotional stakes don't get any higher... and he does that with extraordinary imagination, delicacy and insight," she says.
Rozin was inspired to write the play after the tragedies of the crashes of Pan Am Flight 103 and TWA Flight 800. In both cases, he found the deaths of young students -- a high school French club from Montoursville, Pa. on the TWA flight, a group of Syracuse University exchange students on Pan Am -- "particularly moving."
Penn proved to be a stimulating place for Rozin, whose father is a Penn professor, to develop his talents.
"It's a great environment to nurture people," he says.
Peter Whinnery, technical advisor to student performing arts at Penn, remembers Rozin well.
"Seth was very active in Penn Players.... He was a constant fixture in the performing arts community," he says.
But Rozin was not content with the existing theater programs at Penn. Seeing a need for the numerous theater groups to coordinate their projects and talk through concerns, he co-founded the Performing Arts Council.
Rozin also saw a need for a theater group that did not have to report to the Student Activities Council. Driven by what he calls his "uncontrollable entrepreneurial spirit," he founded the Arts House Theatre -- a group that performed professionally written shows -- during his years as an undergraduate. The group still exists today.
"I thought, why couldn't there be an organization that operated through a different set of rules?" he says.
Operating by a different set of rules is exactly what sets Rozin apart.
Whinnery, who worked with Rozin on technical aspects of his plays, remembers that Rozin was "a pain in my rear because he was such a go-getter."
But that wasn't enough to stop Whinnery from becoming resident designer for Rozin's InterAct Theatre Company several years later.
Rozin's motivation and willingness to take risks made an impression on his Drama Professor Cary Mazer, as well.
"I've always been impressed by his audacity," he says.
One prime example of this audacious behavior was his staging of Stephen Sondheim and Larry Gelbart's version of Aristophanes' The Frogs completely in the Gimbel pool, one of Rozin's fondest Penn memories.
Whinnery remembers Rozin also tried to experiment with using space creatively.
When Rozin directed King of Hearts in Houston Hall in 1985, he set up two stages instead of the traditional one so that the "audience members were intermingling with the performance space," Whinnery says.
But Rozin is no less creative out of the office. The writer and director is also known for the imaginative chopped liver sculptures that he brings to his mother's annual New Year's Day open house.
With unorthodox performances -- and hobbies -- like these, Rozin couldn't help but stand out in the Penn community.
"He was very seriousÿ-- a little somber," Mazer recalls. "He was daring in what he was willing to do."
"He was very talented... he stuck out in a lot of ways because of his inherent talent, his interest in pushing the envelope," Whinnery adds.
This daring nature pushed Rozin to take a risky move indeed -- the co-founding of InterAct Theatre Company.
The group actually began as a troupe that traveled overseas to perform. Rozin was working for Penn's Annenberg Center when an Irish theater company came through on a tour.
"He thought, 'Why don't I do that?'" Mazer says. "He got actors... and had opening nights of four plays in five days" when he toured Ireland.
Once back in the United States, InterAct found a permanent home at 2030 Sansom Street and established itself as a theater devoted to "challenging, thought-provoking plays," Rozin says.
After sticking it out through the first few years, InterAct became, according to Mazer, "one of the most important theater companies in Philadelphia."
And apparently, the rest of the city agrees. Rozin won a Barrymore Award for Outstanding Direction of a Play for his work on Lebensraum, and was nominated for It's All True.
"The Barrymores are Philadelphia's version of the Tonys," Mazer explains.
But critics are not the only ones who love his work. Rozin's cast and crew have nothing but praise for his talent.
"I think he's insightful and able to look at issues from lots of different points of view," says Seth Reichgott, who plays the male lead in Rozin's latest creation.
"He's very good at what he does," adds Catharine Slusar, who plays the female lead.
"He's one of the best directors I've worked with," adds Slusar, who also acted for Rozin in Lebensraum. "He encourages actors to take risks."
Rozin has won admiration for his writing as well.
Power says of Rozin's script for Missing Link that "he captured the pressures of spiritual questioning in relation to crisis very well."
Reichgott seconds that opinion.
"The journeys that the characters go on are quite fascinating, compelling and powerful."
The road has not been easy for Rozin, but he attributes his success "less [to] luck than a lot of long years of determination."
But in the end, Rozin knows the struggle was worth it. When asked what he dreamed of accomplishing when he accepted his Penn diploma in 1986, he didn't hesitate.
"Exactly what I'm doing," he says.
