Graduate Acting
Education
M.F.A. North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Biography
She trained with Edith Skinner, Timothy Monich and Cicely Berry. Ms. Hecht has taught speech and dialect at Juilliard, Yale School of Drama, SUNY Purchase, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, American Conservatory Theater, and Circle in the Square. Deborah has coached many Broadway productions including
After the Fall;
The Frogs; Long Day's Journey Into Night (With Vanessa Redgrave),
The Crucible and
Vincent in Brixton (both directed by Richard Eyre);
The Sound of Music, Diary of Anne Frank, Titanic, Last Night of Ballyhoo, Angels in America, and
The Tempest (Patrick Stewart). She has also coached at Lincoln Center, the Manhattan Theatre Club, New York Theatre Workshop, the Vineyard Theatre, The Roundabout, Second Stage, Manhattan Ensemble Theatre, the New York Shakespeare Festival including
Macbeth (Angela Bassett and Alec Baldwin),
Antony & Cleopatra (Vanessa Redgrave). Regionally she has coached at Yale Rep, Seattle Rep, Berkeley Rep, and the Long Wharf, among others. She has worked internationally in Portugal and at the Royal Shakespeare Company (
Winter's Tale) and the National Theatre (
Burried Child). For film, she has coached such actors as Liam Neeson, Natasha Richardson, Laura Linney, Marissa Tomei, Tim Roth, and Graduate Acting Alumni Billy Crudup and Marcia Gay Harden. Films include
Kinsey, Stage Beauty (Dir. Richard Eyre),
The Last Days (Gus Van Sant),
The Game of Their Lives, Merchant-Ivory's
The White Countess, and
Substance of Fire,
Surviving Picasso and John Turturro's
Iluminata. She is on the board of directors of the Arts-in-education program, Dreamyard.
