Stephen Goldberg, a countercultural playwright and jazz musician who shaped Burlington’s indie theater scene, died of natural causes on Saturday while receiving hospice care at McClure Miller Respite House in Colchester. He was 85.
A prolific artist, Goldberg wrote more than 26 plays and a book of poetry, performed with the jazz ensemble No Walls, and cofounded Burlington’s Off Center for the Dramatic Arts, a venue dedicated to staging experimental theater affordably.
The chain-smoking, vodka-drinking New York City native often wrote about society’s misfits, characters inspired by the colorful people he met while living in the Big Apple. His scripts were edgy, characterized by excessive profanity and plots that didn’t cater to political correctness.
His works include Don and Tom, about two death row prisoners’ last moments; Quantum Dog in a Deep Blue Jaguar, which features an agoraphobic physicist; and Sluts on the Roof, a show that Goldberg described to Seven Days in 2017 as “women talking about men the way men sometimes talk about women."
“He liked the idea of making the audience feel uncomfortable, showing them something unpleasant or hard to watch” said Emma Sky, Goldberg’s daughter. “But he would always do it in a way where it was kind of funny. That dark humor was really the thing that made him so cool.”
Goldberg began his career as a trumpet player, an instrument he picked up in his early teens from his older brother. He studied at the Manhattan School of Music and went on to play backup for the likes of Stevie Wonder, Little Richard and Chuck Berry.
He came to Vermont as musical director of Nimbus Dance for a residency at Johnson State College (now Vermont State University). There, he met his future wife, the late folk singer-songwriter Rachel Bissex. He soon moved to Vermont to be with her. In addition to Sky, he had a son, Jonas Goldberg, from a previous marriage and a stepson, Matthew Cosgrove, from her previous marriage.
“He’s got Bukowski’s philosophy and Eugene O’Neill’s verbosity,” Bissex wrote in a song about Goldberg titled “Sean Connery Looks.”
In his forties, Goldberg transitioned to writing plays, often staging them in bars or at Burlington City Hall. In 1997, he and two friends transformed a studio apartment above Ken’s Pizza and Pub on Church Street into a 40-seat theater. They called it “Off Center for the Dramatic Arts” because “it was kind of funny to have such a pompous overly self-important name for such a humble little shitbox,” cofounder Paul Schnabel said.
The group staged Goldberg's play Screwed, about two friends who hire an escort service for the night. But the production’s success would be its undoing: After attracting a little too much attention, the fire marshal shut the space down after just a few shows.
In 2010, another group — Goldberg, Schnabel, John Alexander and Genevra MacPhail — reopened the Off Center for the Dramatic Arts at 294 North Winooski Avenue, this time in a 70-seat theater that was up to code. There, Goldberg directed many of his avant-garde plays. In 2023, the nonprofit organization moved into a newly built theater at 1127 North Avenue.
“His work contributed to sort of a broadening of the subject matter and therefore a broadening of the audience,” Alexander said. “It expanded the interest in theater in Burlington.”
Even on his deathbed, Goldberg continued to write. The subject of his newest play? A doctor trying to evade allegations of sexual abuse. He asked two friends to produce the work posthumously.
In his final days, Sky played Bach on violin for Goldberg as he lay unconscious. The family plans to host a celebration of Goldberg's life in the fall featuring a musical performance.