Deidre Rubenstein

Deidre Rubenstein (born 1948)^[1] is an Australian screen and theatre actress, dramatist and playwright, well known for her performance in Australian soap operas and main stage dramatic roles.

Rubenstein, who is Jewish,^[2] graduated from the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) in 1967.^[3]

Rubenstein has worked in television comedies, drama, mini-series and TV movies.^[4] In 1970 she appeared in an episode of Homicide. She played a recurring guest role in Prisoner (1979–80), as terrorist Janet Dominguez.

She had leading roles in 1990 film Breaking Through and 1985 miniseries Palace of Dreams, the latter for which she won an Australian Film Institute Award for Best Actress.

In 2004 Rubenstein played the scheming Svetlanka Ristic for twelve episodes of the soap opera Neighbours.^[4]

She has appeared in further guest roles in 1980 miniseries Water Under The Bridge, medical dramas G.P. and MDA, Mercury, comedy series Introducing Gary Petty, The Secret Life of Us, Kick and police dramas Blue Heelers and City Homicide.

Rubenstein also has appeared in Australian feature films Siam Sunset (1999), Hey Hey It’s Esther Blueberger alongside Keisha Castle-Hughes and Essie Davis (2008), Salvation with Wendy Hughes (2008) and Force of Destiny alongside David Wenham (2015).

Rubenstein's career in the theatre includes work with several major Australian companies, including the Nimrod Theatre Company and Melbourne Theatre Company.^[5]

In 1993, she had a solo show called What's a Girl to Do?,^[6] where she performed poems written by contemporary Australian female poets.^[7] It was later performed by Rubenstein at The Stables Theatre in Sydney (1994) and at the 1995 Edinburgh Festival.^[8]

This show inspired her to do another solo show using work commissioned for her, work that was written to be performed live. She was awarded a Victorian Government Women Artist's Grant and commission contemporary writers to produce the performance pieces that were later produced in a book called Confidentially Yours. The first performance was in the Playbox Theatre Centre, C.U.B Malthouse, Melbourne on 11 February 1998. The writers commissioned to produce the work that became Confidentially Yours were Janis Balodis, Andrew Bovell, Nick Enright, Michael Gurr, Daniel Keene, Joanna Murray-Smith and Debra Oswald. Andrew Bovell wrote a pair of stories for the show that he later used in the script for the film Lantana.

In 2005, Rubenstein performed in Menopause the Musical, a comedy breaking down the taboos about menopause.^[9] with Caroline Gillmer, Susan-Ann Walker and Jane Clifton. Rubenstein as 'The Dubbo Housewife', explored the stereotypes and madness of that time in a woman's life.

In 2015, she played Gertrude Stein in the musical Loving Repeating - a Musical of Gertrude Stein in Melbourne.

Rubenstein has produced a significant body of work as a narrator of audio books and has won several awards in this field.^[10]

^[12]

• Rubenstein, Deirdre, ed. (1998). Confidentially yours (Australian Drama – 20th Century). Melbourne: Currency Press, Sydney, in Association with Playbox Theatre Centre, Monash University. ISBN 0-86819-553-7.

• Deidre Rubenstein at IMDb
• doollee.com – Playwrights
• Candide reviews Archived 28 July 2024 at the Wayback Machine Nimrod Theatre (Retrieved 8 August 2007)