Broadway Producer At Home In Bedford

BEDFORD, N.Y. - Dasha Epstein has owned an antique home on 20 acres in Bedford for fifty years. Before her husband passed away, she would come up from the city with him and their two children. She still comes up but now her son lives nearby and her daughter visits with her young son.

Rescued mutts prance around on original oak floors and the home is filled with superb antiques, artifacts and fabulous finds, including a remarkable set of carved wooden chairs she found at the Benefit Shop in Bedford Hills. “All four chairs—guess how much I paid,” she asks. “A hundred and twenty five dollars. A steal.”

As well as an eye for antiques, Epstein has an uncanny ability to find nascent material and turn the productions into hit Broadway productions. Discussing her latest hit, “Chinglish,” those green eyes light up. “This is a play with everything—comedy, romance, mystery and intelligence,” she says. Written by Tony Award-winner David Henry Huang, the play opened to rave reviews in Chicago this past spring, and has just opened to the same enthusiasm on the Great White Way.

As a producer, Epstein has two Tony awards herself—for Ain’t Misbehavin’ and Children of a Lesser God, and a host of other nominations and awards for original plays such as Same Time, Next Year, Master Harold and the Boys, and Mark Twain Tonight. “Chinglish is very original and timely,” Epstein says. “It is about an American trying to do business in modern China, and all the cultural misunderstandings that come about as a result.”

 

Although Broadway is her life work and she is constantly working on nurturing new talent and plays, she craves getting away from it all in Westchester. “When I come to Bedford, I am forced to let my need to control go. Like with the huge storm that just hit us—Mother Nature took over and we are reminded we need to just let it happen. Rather than being stressful, that lack of control actually gives me a lot of peace.”

To read reviews and see interviews and video excerpts of “Chinglish,” or to buy tickets, go to chinglishbroadway.com.

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