Rebecca Bayla Taichman’s success as the Tony award-winning director of Indecent is a reflection of her lifelong celebration of plays by and about women. Taichman began her stage career as an actress, but she shifted focus when she realized that, despite regularly getting work, she would not have cast herself if she were the director. She earned an MFA in theater direction in 2000 from Yale University, where she made her first attempts at turning the obscenity trial of The People v. “God of Vengeance” into her thesis. Taichman began directing a blend of new plays, including Kate Robin’s Swimming in March and Sarah Ruhl’s plays The Clean House, Dead Man’s Cell Phone, and Stage Kiss, alongside her reinterpretations of classics such as Twelfth Night, Iphigeneia at Aulis, and The Diary of Anne Frank. Over the course of eight years, she worked with playwright Paula Vogel to transform Sholem Asch’s play God of Vengeance and the controversy that plagued it into Indecent, leading to Taichman’s 2016 Broadway debut as well as Tony, Obie, and Outer Critics Circle awards for best director. Since then, she has continued developing new works, directing Jocelyn Bioh’s School Girls and Sarah Ruhl’s Becky Nurse of Salem. As of 2024, current projects include Ella Hickson’s The Others, Lupe Fiasco and Lynn Nottage’s Wave, Jennifer Nettles’ musical Original Sin, and Edna Walsh’s musical adaptation of Sing Street. Taichman has taught at New York University, the O’Neill National Theater Institute, MIT, the University of Maryland, and Yale University.