Misha Berson | ATCA member, critic, advocate of new plays (1950-2025)
On Thursday, February 13, longtime ATCA member Misha Berson passed away suddenly and unexpectedly. Misha was an active member of our organization, most recently co-chairing with Cameron Kelsall the New Play committee that conveys the Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award and Osborn Award. She was a 25-year lead critic for the Seattle Times until retiring from her full-time post in 2016. In the following years, she wrote features and criticism for multiple regional and national outlets including American Theatre magazine, served as a trainer with the National Critics Institute and as jury chair for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama, and authored books, most recently Something’s Coming, Something Good: West Side Story and the American Imagination.
ATCA sends its deepest condolences to Misha’s friends and family. We are deeply grateful for the love and light Misha brought to ATCA, and her role in championing theater criticism for many years.
Late on Saturday evening, her husband Paul Schiavo posted this note on Misha’s Facebook page:
Dear friends, and friends of Misha:
It is with the heaviest of hearts that I must convey the news that Misha passed away, very quickly and unexpectedly, late Thursday evening, February 13. Although the cause of her demise is not known with certainty, it appears to have been a sudden and major heart attack.
Misha was, as most of you know, a person of extraordinary vitality, endowed with great love for life. Those qualities flowed both from and into her work. As a writer on theater and drama, she was a keen and insightful observer, yet never in a detached, analytic way. Rather, her devotion to the art form was passionate and visceral, born of her deep love of language, narrative and stagecraft. Steeped in theatrical tradition and mindful of its virtues, she nevertheless remained open to, and supportive of, innovative concepts and practices. She knew the Greek tragedies, was thoroughly acquainted with the Shakespeare canon, yet enjoyed and appreciated Broadway musicals. (Her fascination with the latter led to her “Something’s Coming, Something Good: West Side Story and the American Imagination.”) Always she sought in her writing to convey her enthusiasm for theater and her conviction of its importance to society, and to encourage her readers to engage more thoughtfully with it. She was ever that rare thing, an advocate-critic.
Misha’s artistic affinities extended also to music, film and fiction. She had a nearly encyclopedic knowledge of popular music and a particular reverence for jazz vocalists. She, herself, loved to sing and did so with a wonderful sense of style. She was fortunate to perform occasionally with some of Seattle’s best professionals, but she also deigned to sing with me. One of the treats of my life with her was to accompany her in performances and, more recently, in home recordings of songs close to her heart.
Misha was an inveterate film viewer and was especially every evening with the latest novel that had come into her hands. But in addition to her intellectual pursuits—more accurately, as an adjunct to them— she loved to travel, to cook, to be in nature. The daughter of a sports writer, she was a die-hard baseball fan and recently came to enjoy football, especially when the Seattle Seahawks were involved.
Most of all, she loved her friends, family and colleagues. She was, as many came to know, a “people-person.” Warm, outgoing and genuinely interested in others, she was often happiest in company, and her presence and personality brought joy to many with whom she came in contact. Moreover, her compassion and concern for others was the foundation of her strong political principles, which, in turn, motivated her volunteer work for election campaigns and other kinds of activism.
To me, she was the dearest wife and life-partner. Our shared interest in the arts and in writing, our perfectly aligned senses of humor, her deep love of her step daughter Sarah, whom Misha came to feel as truly her own daughter, made our life together rich in ways intellectual, emotional and spiritual. Her parting has left a void in my heart and mind, but also in the wider world. I have no way to express how deeply she will be missed, nor the measure of my sorrow. Best to give the last words to the Bard, as I’m sure Misha would approve:
“Good night, sweet… And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”
Plans for a memorial have not been announced.
– Submitted by David John Chávez, with links and light edits by Martha Wade Steketee
Additional coverage:
February 16, 2025 Oregon ArtsWatch (Bob Hicks)
February 18, 2025 Seattle Times (Melissa Davis)
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