Lights, Camera, Action!
By: Stephanie Sanchez, Darah Phillip, and Merlys Alberto.

The lights in the Make-Up room are shining brightly, making the room hot and stuffy. But the heat and glaring lights don’t seem to bother the woman sitting in the middle of it all – Osnat Greenbaum,48. It almost seems as if she is at ease and comfortable in this kind of environment. She sits there basking in the lights, dressed casually, with hair casually pulled back into a simple ponytail, and funky charm bracelets dangling from her wrists. She’s laid back seems herself to be glowing.

Greenbaum is a mother, actress, teacher, director, and make-up artist. During the day, she is the professor for the Visual Elements of Theater class in the College Now program at Lehman College of the City of New York. At night, she is an actress and director for The Absinthe-Minded Theater Company. And when she is not teaching, directing, or acting, Greenbaum is the loving mother to two children. Oh, yeah, and she is also enrolled in Hunter College of the City University of New York, where she is receiving her masters in Theater. As you can see she can multitask.

“A lot of aspects in my life are great; I’m not complaining,” Greenbaum told a group of reporters. Greenbaum is a very distinctive person. She was born, raised, and educated in Israel, arriving in the United States at the age of 20. Unlike her, her husband and two kids where born in the U.S.

Greenbaum didn't aspire to be a teacher when she was a child. However, she admits that she feels good when imparting information to others. "I look at it with great reverence," she says, regarding her teaching. Her goal is not only to teach her students. "My aim is not to teach, but to spark," she says. She wants to get her students interested in what she is most interested in: theater. She draws many parallels between teaching and being in theater, saying that each class is like a performance. Also, it can very tedious and you need to get everyone on the same page.
When Greenbaum is not teaching or on stage, she enjoys hobbies like ballet, cooking, and traveling. When asked what she would do if she weren’t teaching, she said, “I’d probably be tanning in the Hamptons. But don’t write that!”

Greenbaum is a polyglot, speaking Hebrew and English fluently and being proficient in Italian and French. “Theater is like a foreign language,” she offered. “You have a lot to learn about it.”
As for retiring, Greenbaum says she hasn’t really given it much thought. “I’ll probably read a lot, do theater as much as I can,” she said. “It doesn’t matter what form it is – gardening, a lot of crosswords, and traveling. I just want to be healthy.”

"At the end of it everyone is working like a well-oiled machine," Greenbaum concluded.