Sarah Treem

Sarah Treem
Born Boston, Massachusetts
United States
Alma mater Yale University
Occupation Writer-Producer
Playwright
Years active (2010-present)
Known for In Treatment
The Affair
Spouse(s) Jay Carson
Children 1

Sarah Treem is an American TV writer-producer and playwright. She is best known for her work collaborating with Hagai Levi, including on the U.S. version of In Treatment and the Showtime drama The Affair,[1] which she co-created with Levi. She also wrote for the first season of the U.S. version of House of Cards.

Early life

Treem was born in Boston, Massachusetts to a mother who works as a consultant/angel investor and advisor to start-ups and to a father who is a pediatric gastroenterologist.[2][3] She grew up in New Hampshire, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Connecticut, and North Carolina with her parents and brother.[2] Treem "says she moved around a lot as a child but lived the longest — eight years — in New Haven and considers it 'home.'"[3]

When she was 12 years old, Treem's first play, which was "written in rhyming couplets with the refrain 'Who am I going to sit with at lunch?'"[4][5] The play "won a statewide young playwrights contest and was staged in Connecticut."[4] Treem said she always knew she was a writer. "I’d always known. When I was 8, I was writing poetry. I started writing plays when I was 12, and kept writing plays all through high school and college."[6]

Treem has a 2002 B.A. from Yale College, where she was in the residential college, Branford College,[7] and a 2005 M.F.A. from Yale School of Drama.

Career

During college Treem interned at New Dramatists.[8] Treem has "taught disabled vets at a program in Maine run by the Jesuits, saw her play Orphan Island submitted to Sundance, and attended Yaddo, the famous artists’ retreat in upstate New York."[2]

On how her career in TV started, "I had just gotten signed with Endeavor [William Morris Endeavor talent and literary agency]. Endeavor sent my play Mirror, Mirror, about high school students in the South, which I’d written in graduate school, to HBO. And HBO sent it to Rodrigo García, the showrunner of In Treatment at the time. He read it, and he liked the voice."[6] Treem found her experience writing for the first season "awful. The pressure was enormous. I had no idea what I was doing. When the season was over, I flew back to New York and swore to my agents I’d never work in TV again. I know that all probably sounds impossibly naive, but television is not an easy business. You’ve got to be really tough. I started young, and it took me a while to develop my skin. So the first years were very painful for me."[6]

Treem said that Hagai Levi "has been a great supporter, mentor and friend of mine since the early days of In Treatment."[6] She said, "From him, I learned to trust the characters – to let them speak for themselves – and that you don’t have to rely on pyrotechnics to advance plot. You just need desire and despair."[6]

On House of Cards: "With House of Cards, the whole point of that world is that everybody is a cynic. And it’s satire, on a certain level. So as a writer, you’ve just got to tap into what the essence of the show is and write from there."[6]

Treem wrote the original script for Showtime's The Affair from a story co-created with Hagai Levi, whom she worked with on In Treatment.[9] The show takes a "he said-she said" approach to telling the story of an affair from both the male and female perspectives.[10] Treem said that "the concept is that two people can be in the same conversation and have radically different experiences."[11]

On The Affair: “We’re trying, hard, to create art on television,” said co-creator Sarah Treem. “We’re not trying to make the shows difficult, or more complex than usual, but we are trying to use television as a medium that could, perhaps, engender an art form. That’s the objective.”[12] Treem said "I've planned three seasons in outline format. And then I have a vague idea of what a fourth or fifth season could look like. When I pitched it to them, I pitched it in three seasons. I think David Nevins wants it to go longer, but three seasons was enough for him to greenlight the show."[13]

The Affair includes references to the book, Peter Pan, which connects to the idea of a lost childhood, and the loss of a child by one of the main characters in the show.[14] Treem said they had a consultant on the show named Esther Perel, who wrote a book called Mating in Captivity.[15] Treem said "She has spent her whole life talking to couples about infidelity and affairs—that’s her bread and butter. And she has this great quote from Mating in Captivity where she says something like when people go looking for affairs, it’s not because they’re unhappy with their spouse but because they’re unsatisfied with who they’ve become."[15]

As of February 2014, Treem is adapting the memoir, Until I Say Good-Bye: My Year of Living with Joy, by Susan Spencer-Wendel. The book is a "trenchant memoir of terminal illness," (ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease),[6] and will be a Universal Studios feature film.[6]

She has taught playwriting at Yale.

Writing style

"[B]eing a playwright has never paid my bills and I feel extremely fortunate to have become a part of the television industry. It really is the golden age of television. We’re creating content that is disseminated and devoured immediately and we’re influencing the national conversation. I was surprised to find that the different mediums really inform each other. Contrary to popular belief, writing for television has made me a better playwright. In TV you have to choose your words very carefully. Because with a camera, excess is obvious. Even little speeches in television have to be well justified or they feel ridiculous. The best scenes say the most with the fewest possible words. That rigor with language has absolutely improved my playwriting."

Sarah Treem, TimeLine Theater Company (February 19, 2014)[16]

All of Treem's plays have a high percentage of women roles.[17] Treem has forged ongoing creative relationships with actresses like Zoe Kazan (who knew each other from Yale) and Allison Pill.[4][17]

Because she was the youngest writer on staff for In Treatment, and had just graduated from Yale, her work on all three seasons of the show involved the storylines with the youngest members of staff.[11]

Commenting on her collaboration with Hagai, and how there is a benefit to a rigid structure: "He’s not quite as interested in the minutiae of what happens every episode. He’s more interested in how the machine operates. And I do think that if you have a format that is somewhat rigid, your creativity can explode within it. I think where shows get into trouble is they don’t necessarily have (a format) – the show can literally go anywhere."[11]

On writers' rooms: "I don’t love writers’ rooms, which is something that I have to come to terms with when we start The Affair. I’m the kind of writer who likes to be alone more than in a group of people. For me, writing really has to come from an unconscious place, and then the act of writing is bringing the unconscious into the conscious mind and surprising yourself."[6]

Filmography

Awards

Personal life

On June 21, 2014,[21] Treem married Jay Carson, a producer and former campaign spokesman for Howard Dean and Hillary Clinton.[22] They have a son[22] and live in Topanga, California.[23]

Works or publications

Plays

References

  1. ↑ Sandberg, Bryn Elise (21 December 2014). "'The Affair' Creator on the Finale's Big Reveal". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 22 December 2014.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Citron, Cynthia (9 August 2011). "Sarah Treem Gets the Ojai Treatment". LA Stage Times. Retrieved 20 October 2014.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Dunlap, LucyAnn (12 January 2011). "The Unexplored Terrain of Being a Woman". U.S. 1 Newspaper - PrincetonInfo. Retrieved 27 October 2014.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Sontag, Deborah (14 May 2009). "Young Talents Entwined ‘In Treatment’". The New York Times. Retrieved 20 October 2014.
  5. ↑ Peterman, Scott (20 October 2000). "Damn the Canon: Yalies take on the word". Yale Herald. Retrieved 20 October 2014.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8 Littlefield, Kinney (28 February 2014). "Sarah Treem: On a different path". The Writer. Retrieved 21 October 2014.
  7. ↑ Treem, Sarah (13 September 2001). "For the readers of 2101: my 9/11/01". Yale Daily News. Retrieved 20 October 2014.
  8. ↑ "Sarah Treem". PDC (Philadelphia Dramatists Center). Retrieved 20 October 2014.
  9. ↑ Goldberg, Lesley (18 July 2014). "Showtime Debuts 'Affair' Trailer, EP Says Title Will Prove 'Ironic'". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 20 October 2014.
  10. ↑ Sandberg, Bryn Elise (18 October 2014). "'The Affair' Creator Sarah Treem on Dual Narrative". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 20 October 2014.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 Sepinwall, Alan (10 October 2014). "'The Affair' co-creator Sarah Treem: 'We wanted to tell a story about two good people'". HitFix. Retrieved 21 October 2014.
  12. ↑ Macfarlane, Steve (7 October 2014). "Showtime’s ‘The Affair’ Aims to ‘Create Art on Television,’ Says Exec Producer Sarah Treem". Variety. Retrieved 21 October 2014.
  13. ↑ Miller, Liz Shannon (10 October 2014). "'The Affair' Creator Sarah Treem on Constructing the 'Rashomon' of Relationship Dramas". Indiewire. Retrieved 21 October 2014.
  14. ↑ Zuckerman, Esther (13 October 2014). "'The Affair' co-creator Sarah Treem on the pilot and 'Peter Pan'". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved 21 October 2014.
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Dockterman, Eliana (10 October 2014). "Why Showtime’s The Affair Will Be as Intense as Game of Thrones". Time. Retrieved 27 October 2014.
  16. ↑ Powers, PJ (19 February 2014). "A conversation with Sarah Treem". TimeLine Theatre. Retrieved 27 October 2014.
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 Rickwald, Bethany (17 June 2014). "Zoe Kazan Discusses Taking on Sarah Treem's Weighty New Play About Womyn". TheaterMania. Retrieved 21 October 2014.
  18. ↑ Longwell, Todd (16 September 2008). "Humanitas Prize luncheon". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 20 October 2014.
  19. ↑ "Writers Guild Awards - 2014 Nominees & Winners". Writers Guild of America. Retrieved 20 October 2014.
  20. ↑ "The Affair". Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Retrieved 14 March 2015.
  21. ↑ Allen, Mike (23 June 2014). "Weekend Wedding -- Jay Carson and Sarah Treem". Politico. Retrieved 20 October 2014.
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 Dowd, Maureen (18 October 2014). "An Affair to Remember, Differently". The New York Times. Retrieved 20 October 2014.
  23. ↑ "The Affair - Season One (TCAs)" (PDF). CBS Press Express. Summer 2014. Retrieved 20 October 2014.
  24. ↑ Vittes, Laurence (14 January 2008). "Theater Reviews: A Feminine Ending". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 20 October 2014.
  25. ↑ Stasio, Marilyn (17 October 2007). "Review: ‘A Feminine Ending’". Variety. Retrieved 20 October 2014.
  26. ↑ Sommers, Michael (25 January 2011). "Review: ‘The How and the Why’". Variety. Retrieved 20 October 2014.
  27. ↑ "A Conversation with Sarah Treem and Emily Mann". McCarter Theatre. Retrieved 21 October 2014.
  28. ↑ Rooney, David (17 June 2014). "'When We Were Young and Unafraid': Theater Review". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 20 October 2014.
  29. ↑ Stasio, Marilyn (17 June 2014). "Off Broadway Review: ‘When We Were Young and Unafraid’ Starring Cherry Jones". Variety. Retrieved 20 October 2014.
  30. ↑ Soloski, Alexis (12 June 2014). "Sex, Violence and Power, With a Feminist Slant". The New York Times. Retrieved 21 October 2014.

External links