I have only been writing plays since 2015 and feel incredibly lucky to have had opportunities to see my work on stage and to learn what people thought. In each case, I have taken criticisms to heart and worked to revamp and revise so that my plays can get better each time. Toward that end, I have sought out mentors to guide me in making these improvements. I will always be grateful to each one.

THE WOOD$TOCK TONTINE

Raleigh News and Observer

Rubin’s writing is intelligent, humane and witty. She has an obvious flair for humorous banter but also supplies characters with intriguing talents and quirks. Friday’s enthusiastic audience made it plain that material of this nature is wanted and needed. —Roy Dicks, Raleigh News and Observer

The Independent Weekly

Five mature women in The Woodstock Tontine shatter the stereotypes lazy playwrights favor. These are some of the people we’ve been waiting to meet. None of these five women truly fit into the reductive ingenue-wife-crone troika that lazy playwrights have been fond of for so long. —Byron Woods, IndyWeek

Triangle Arts and Entertainment 

The Woodstock Tontine takes the audience on an emotional journey of love, loss, and friendship. In theater, there are very few roles for actresses over 50. There are fewer roles in which this age group leads the show or are the heroines. Rubin’s play speaks to multiple generations.

Arts in the Triangle

The Woodstock Tontine may blend truth with fiction, but the characters revealed onstage are 100% authentic, relatable and funny.

THE RED DRESS (a monologue)

In Steffi Rubin’s monologue “The Red Dress,” the dress brings a life-changing insight to a boy during a grade-school costume game: the promise of the trans woman he’ll eventually be. Rubin got permission to dramatize the childhood experience of a friend, a Los Angeles theater artist who grew up in a small New Hampshire town. “There was a dress that changed everything, a dress that said not just who you are, but that you are,” Rubin says. —Byron Woods, Indy Week

TERMINAL (a ten-minute play)

During the wordless opening scene of Steffi Rubin’s amusing opener, Terminal, director Lynda Clark crisply telegraphs the schisms between Melanie Simmons and Bryan Bender’s husband-and-wife duo. But Bender and David Klionsky have trouble following Simmons and Angela Burks through Rubin’s hairpin curves as relationship revelations turn an awkward dinner party into a terminal event. —Byron Woods, Indy Week