A fixture of Off-Broadway and regional theater spaces, Rebecca Taichman has been at the helm of many productions including “Familiar,” “Stage Kiss,” “The Oldest Boys,” “Winter’s Tale,” and “The Clean House.” She’s also a champion of female playwrights, having worked closely with Danai Gurira, Rachel Sheinkin, Sarah Ruhl, Kirsten Greenidge, Theresa Rebeck, and many others.

Yet it’s only now that Taichman is making her Broadway directorial debut with a play called “Indecent,” a love story about two women set in Poland at the turn of the century. Written by Pulitzer Prize winner Paula Vogel, the play is an homage to Sholem Asch’s controversial 1907 play “God of Vengeance,” about an obscenity trial and the people it impacted over the course of 40 years. “Indecent” is also the result of a seven-year collaboration between the two artists.

Taichman has already received many well-deserved accolades for her work on “Indecent.” Not only is she nominated for a Tony, she has won the 2017 Outer Critics Circle Award and Obie Award for Best Director. “Indecent” is also up for the Tony for Best Play.

I talked to Taichman about the role gender plays on Broadway, working with Vogel and the entire “Indecent” team, and bringing an important part of history to the NYC stage.

W&H: Can you talk about what it’s like to be a theater director today?

RT: It is so many things: crazy making, exhilarating, exhausting, fiercely challenging, and all in all, home. I feel very fortunate to direct such wonderful material and for me, the telling of a powerful story is the reason to do it.

W&H: How has gender, if at all, impacted your career and the choices you’ve made?

RT: I think that being a female director certainly has impacted my career, but specifically how is hard to say. Most of my career I have been lucky to direct at incredible theaters around the country and Off-Broadway. I have loved working at places like STC, Playwrights Horizons, La Jolla Playhouse, Woolly Mammoth, Lincoln Center amongst others… and it wasn’t easy to get those gigs for a while, either.

Let’s focus on Broadway for a moment — I feel deep gratitude and very fortunate indeed to have made it to Broadway and with this play. On Broadway, and elsewhere, there is very real inequity in the numbers — many more men make it there. The same issue exists with race, not just gender.

Has it been easy getting here? No. Am I aware of the enormous inequities that surround this opportunity that I have? Yes. My hope is that the more women direct large scale productions, the more it will happen. I hope the more it happens the more it multiplies opportunities.

W&H: Is this kind of inequity specific to Broadway?

RT: There’s inequity all over sadly — not just on Broadway — and it should be said again there is a very real racial inequity as well as gender inequity. In terms of Broadway, there are many reasons the inequities are more severe. There’s a lot of unconscious bias — we watched it play out, in my view, in the election.

One very concrete reason that is specific to Broadway is just how high the stakes are, how much money is at risk. I have compassion for producers wanting to work with directors they know well and who have been tested. I share that instinct: I like to work with the same designers, choreographers, etc. when I can. You grow relationships over time and the relationships deepen — so the art often gets better. The first step in creating new relationships — especially within such a high stakes environment — is a scary one, but one that needs to be taken more and more.

The more it happens, the more it will happen. It’s just inch by inch. It’s moving slowly.

W&H: You worked with playwright Paula Vogel for seven years on this play. Can you please talk about the evolution of your collaboration?

RT: Well, I guess the story starts 20 years ago — before I knew Paula and only admired her from a great distance — when I was a graduate student at Yale. I happened upon the play “God of Vengeance” and fell madly in love with it. Rebecca Rugg, a dramaturg, and I happened to discover that the Yale library housed everything to do with the play and the 1923 obscenity trial from when it opened on Broadway. The trial transcript, Sholem Asch’s papers, Harry Weinberger’s [Broadway producer and court defender of “God of Vengeance”] papers were all housed at the Yale libraries. During my three years of graduate school, I fell down a kind of rabbit hole into this memory of what happened to the play. Out of this, I attempted to make a play titled “The People vs. The God of Vengeance.” It interwove transcripts of the obscenity trial with the text of the play.

It was clear after the years of work that there was an important story to tell… but it was also very clear that I was not the one to write it.

W&H: So in comes Paula Vogel?

RT: It took a long time to have the courage and audacity to call Paula, who was clearly the perfect person but also a real long shot. As it turned out she too had fallen in love with “God of Vengeance” long before I knew of it. She describes us like two Trekkies who found each other… What were the chances?

From the beginning, Paula saw a bigger, more epic story that we could tell. Paula took the seed of this idea that I had and turned it into an epic masterpiece.

W&H: How did your Jewish identity play into your interest in this story?

RT: My grandparents spoke Yiddish. One of my grandfathers was a Yiddish poet. Yiddish was just around me as I grew up, and I was very aware that the language wasn’t getting passed down.

All of it felt extremely personal all along the way and now I believe we have turned it into something that can speak to a very diverse group of people — anyone who has felt marginalized by the culture relates to our characters deeply. “Indecent” is a Jewish story but it’s also a story about gay history, about fear and hatred of immigrants, about love and what is considered “indecent.” And finally, it’s a love story– a love story about the real power of making art and speaking out when times are dangerous.

W&H: Is it harder to bring plays with this kind of social resonance to Broadway?

RT: The experience that I have had bringing this particular play to Broadway has been extraordinary. We have been blessed to work with smart, fearless, and passionate producers. There was a never a conversation about softening or mitigating any issues in the play. Our producers Daryl Roth, Liz McCann, and Cody Lassen made the choice to move it uptown and that right there — that decision — was an exceptional and beautiful act. They always — every step — have had real faith in what the piece is.

W&H: What are your hopes with the show and are you changed as a result, personally and/or professionally?

RT: I hoped 20 years ago that this story would not be forgotten. It’s a story of one piece of art and its passage through decades… It’s quite a lens through which to view a turbulent swath of history; through the life of one play. I hope it reaches many.

To work on a piece with Paula for so long — I have learned so much from her. And to work with this company of designers, actors, composers, musicians — it’s all been the gift of a lifetime.