Deborah Brevoort is a playwright and musical theatre librettist /
lyricist who lived for many years in Alaska
before relocating to the New York City
area and her home state of New Jersey. She is an
alumna of New Dramatists.
She is the author of
The Women of Lockerbie
which won the Kennedy Center’s Fund for New American Plays Award, & the
silver medal in the Onassis International Playwriting Competition.
It was produced in Los Angeles at Tim Robbins'
Actor's Gang in 2007, at the Orange Tree Theatre
in London in 2005 and Off-Broadway
by the New Group Theatre & the Women’s Project in
2003 .
It is currently being produced
around the world and is published in three languages.
She recently finished two new plays:
The Poetry of Pizza,
a comedy about love, and The Blue-Sky Boys,
a comedy about NASA’s Apollo engineers with a commission from the
Ensemble Studio Theatre/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Science &
Technology Project. In 2004 she was awarded a
CEC Artslink Grant to write The Velvet Weapon,
a comedy about the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, in
collaboration with
Pavel
Dobrusky and the 9 Gates Theatre Festival in Prague.
She is also the librettist of
King Island Christmas,
an oratorio for the musical stage, with composer David Friedman,
which won the 1997 Frederick Loewe Award. An album with
orchestrations by Peter Matz and produced by 12-time Grammy winner
Thomas Z. Shepard was released in 1999 by the King Island Record
Company. There have been over 40 productions since 1997, including performances at the Paper Mill
Playhouse, Lyric Stage, Theatre IV and Perseverance Theatre. The CD
was broadcast internationally by Voice of America in 1999 &
2000. She and David also just finished writing
Goodbye My Island,
a companion musical to King Island Christmas.
Deborah wrote the book and lyrics for
Coyote Goes Salmon Fishing,
with composer Scott Richards, which won the 2001 Frederick Loewe
Award. It was produced in 1996 by Stuart Ostrow at the Univ. of
Houston & at Perseverance Theatre directed by Molly Smith. In 1998
she was given the Paul Green Award by the National Theatre
Conference and composer Jerry Bock for her book-writing in the
musical theatre.
Her play, Into the Fire won the
1999 L. Arnold Weissberger Award
& is published by Samuel French. It was presented at the O'Neill in
1995 and at the 1996 Australian National Playwrights Conference. It
was the Rhode Island winner for the 1995 Clauder Competition and
chosen for the 1998 New Plays Festival at Charlotte Repertory
Theatre.
Blue Moon Over Memphis,
her Noh Drama About Elvis Presley, won the Lee Korf Award.
It was presented in the Lincoln Center Living Room Festival and La
Mama’s “Experimental Theatre Series.”
It was produced at the New
School University & Brown University, directed by the author.
It was published in Japanese and English in 2004 in the
Journal of the Noh Research Archives by Musashino University in
Tokyo, and by Applause Books in The Best American Short Plays:
2003-2004.
Signs of Life
won the 2002 Jane Chambers Award and the 2004 Theatre
Conspiracy (Ft. Myers, Florida) competition where it premiered in February 2005. It was also a gold medalist in the
Pinter Review Prize for Drama, and won second place in the
2003 Hanover College/Lily Foundation International Playwriting
Competition. The play also received a
Rockefeller Foundation Grant. An early
draft of the play was produced at the Perseverance Theatre in
Juneau, Alaska and Company One in Hartford CT. Deborah has been with
the Perseverance Theatre since 1980 where many of her plays have
been produced.
She is the author of
Covered Dishes a screenplay commissioned by
Fox Searchlight Pictures & Goat Cay Productions. Her latest
screenplay,
Mexico in Alaska has received Honorable Mentions in
several national and Hollywood screenwriting competitions.
Deborah has received grants and commissions from the NEA,
Rockefeller Foundation, NYFA (New York Foundation on the Arts),
Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation,
Alaska State Council on the Arts, Danish American Society, Brown
University, The Harburg Foundation and Banff Playwright's Colony.
She was given the 2001 Joe Calloway Award and was a
MacDowell Fellow in 1994. Her work has been published in
numerous acting editions. She has done playwriting residencies in
Canada, Mexico, Australia and Denmark. She holds MFAs in Playwriting
from Brown University, and Musical Theatre writing from
NYU's Tisch School of the Arts where she currently teaches.
She also teaches at the New School ’s
Eugene Lang College and in the MFA playwriting programs at Goddard
College and Columbia University.
