(upbeat bongo music)
- My name is David Zabel, I was Class of '88
from Princeton University.
I had a concentration in English,
and a certificate from the Program in Theater.
I recently made a deal for two years
to develop television for Sony,
which is why I've just moved into this office.
A major highlight of my career of course happened
in 2000 when I was hired onto "ER,"
which at that point was the number one drama
in the world, and that was a huge opportunity
for me that I was hoping I wouldn't blow,
and it turns out that I guess I did okay with it.
I lasted eight years there,
I got to run that show in Executive Producer
for five years.
We did four episodes about Darfur.
You know, I personally wrote a few of them,
and won a Humanitas Prize for that,
which I was really very proud of.
If you're someone who's interested in pursuing
a creative profession, a creative arts profession,
and if you have a mother like mine,
then she will say to you, "What about law school?"
Not a single one in my family
has ever pursued a career in the arts.
They're all very successful, mostly lawyers.
I think they're proud that I did something different
and that it has worked out.
I grew up in Manhattan my whole childhood, my whole life.
My grandmother was a theater nut,
and so she would come to New York twice a year
and try to go to as many plays as she could in a week,
which usually meant about eight shows
in six days, matinees included, and drag me
from a very young age to every play she could drag me to,
so I kind of got a little bit of my interest
and obsession in the theater from my grandmother.
A seminal experience for me really happened
almost immediately when I got to Princeton
because the first thing I did, literally, freshman week
was I went and auditioned for a play.
And I got cast in that play,
and I found myself propelled into this community of people
who are doing theater, both at Theatre Intime,
which was the student-run theater,
and at 185 Nassau, which was the Program in Theater.
I immediately felt like I had a community of people
that I fit in with, who accepted me,
and who I felt simpatico with.
There are really two mentors I constantly think about still.
On one hand, Carol Elliott was an acting teacher
and a director who was so important to me in terms
of helping me understand new kinds of theater,
and illustrating ways of breathing life into characters,
and putting plays and stories up on their feet.
The other big part was Michael Cadden.
He was such a brilliant teacher of modern drama
in terms of understanding
how a writer constructs characters, constructs story,
and creates dramatic narratives.
And when I look back on it,
I really see sort of the framework of the education
that resulted in what I ultimately did with my career.
Among a few other things, I am focusing on a second season
of this show called "Mercy Street"
which I'm doing for PBS.
"Mercy Street" is set in a Union hospital
in the town of Alexandria soon after Alexandria
is occupied by the Union army,
so it's a Union hospital in a southern town
and a great cross-section of the war.
The interesting thing to me about being a show-runner
that I think is one thing
that I've managed to find a good balance with
is there's the solitary part of being a writer,
and then there's the sort-of social administrative part
of leading a production and managing a production.
In the case of "Mercy Street,"
it's as if we're writing a six hour movie.
The two writers and myself, we're doing
about seven weeks together in a room,
and then after that, the writers will go off
and write their scripts.
I've had some success, but I have had many frustrations,
disappointments, failures.
There's a tremendous amount of rejection
in any kind of creative field that is like the one I'm in.
So you have to be able to face up to that.
The beauty of being a writer is that everything you learn
is potentially useful and often turns out
to be crucial at some point.
So I still have moments where I think, all of a sudden,
you know, 25 years later, I think (snaps) I'm glad I took
that class at Princeton because there's some part
of my brain that knows a little bit about this
and that's sort of a door into learning more
that I need to know in order to capture it dramatically.
(upbeat bongo music)