Deborah Brevoort


Deborah Brevoort is an American playwright, librettist and lyricist best known for her play The Women of Lockerbie. She teaches Creative Writing at several universities.

Early years

Brevoort was born in Columbus, Ohio to Virginia and Gordon Brevoort. She is the oldest of three children. She graduated from Ridgewood High School in Ridgewood, NJ. She attended Kent State University where she received a BA in English and Political Science, and an MA in Political Science.
Deborah moved to Juneau, Alaska in 1979. She worked in Alaskan politics serving as a special assistant to Lt. Governor Terry Miller and Alaska State Senator Frank Ferguson. In 1983 she became the Producing Director of Perseverance Theatre and an actor in the company. Her first two plays were produced at Perseverance: The Last Frontier Club in 1987 and Signs of Life in 1990. Signs of Life was awarded a Rockefeller Foundation playwriting grant and was later published by Samuel French.
Brevoort left Alaska to attend Brown University in Providence RI, where she received her MFA in Playwriting in 1993. She moved to New York City to attend New York University's Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program where she received an MFA in 1995.

Career

Brevoort is best known for her play The Women of Lockerbie, a story about the aftermath of the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, told in the form of a Greek tragedy. It was inspired by the laundry project undertaken by Lockerbie women, who washed the clothes of the victims and returned them to the families. In 2001 it won the silver medal in the Onassis International Playwriting Competition and the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays Award. It premiered Off-Broadway in 2003 by the New Group and Women's Project. It was produced in London at the Orange Tree Theatre in 2005, at the Theater Royal in Dumfries, at the Actor's Gang in Los Angeles in 2007 and the Will Geer Theater in Santa Monica in 2012. It is published by Dramatists Play Service and has been translated into seven languages.
Brevoort's plays and musicals often use theatrical conventions and forms from around the world to explore contemporary American subjects. She wrote a Japanese Noh Drama about Elvis Presley called Blue Moon Over Memphis, which was published by Applause Books in The Best American Short Plays of 2004; a musical comedy inspired by world mythology and Saturday morning cartoons called Coyote Goes Salmon Fishing, with composer Scott Davenport Richards in 1998; and a holiday musical written in the form of an oratorio, called King Island Christmas, with composer David Friedman, based on the Alaskan children's book of the same title in 1999. Both Coyote Goes Salmon Fishing and King Island Christmas won the Frederick Loewe Award.
She used the methods of magic realism from Latin American novels to dramatize life in an Alaskan fishing town in her play Into the Fire, which won the Weissberger Award in 1999 and was published by Samuel French in 2000.
In 2007 she wrote The Poetry of Pizza using the conventions of farce and romantic comedy to explore Arab/American relations and love across cultures. It was developed in the Centenary Stage Women's Playwright's Festival and was subsequently produced at the Purple Rose Theatre, Virginia Stage, Mixed Blood Theatre, California Rep, Theatre in the Square and Stage 3.
In 2009 she completed The Blue-Sky Boys, about NASA's Apollo engineers and the intersection of creativity and science, with a commission from the EST/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Science & Technology project. It premiered at the Barter Theatre in Virginia and was subsequently produced by Capital Rep in Albany, NY.
In 2010 she wrote The Velvet Weapon, using the back stage farce to dramatize populist democracy movements in the US. The play was written with a grant from CEC Arts Link and is inspired by the Velvet Revolution of Czechoslovakia.
In 2011 she wrote the libretto for Embedded, a one-act opera inspired by Edgar Allan Poe stories with composer Patrick Soluri for the American Lyric Theater. "Embedded won the inaugural Frontiers Competition at Ft. Worth Opera where it was subsequently produced in 2016. It was also produced at Fargo Moorhead Opera in 2014.
In 2012 she completed The Comfort Team, a play about military spouses, with a commission from Virginia Stage.
She wrote the libretto for Steal a Pencil for Me, a full-length opera about Holocaust survivors, based on the book of the same title, with composer Gerald Cohen, which won the Frontiers Competition at Ft. Worth Opera in 2016. It premiered at Opera Colorado in 2018.
In 2018, she wrote the opera libretto for "Albert Nobbs" with composer Patrick Soluri. It was a finalist for the Dominic Pellicciotti Prize in Opera Composition. It was also the winner of the Frontiers competition in 2019 at Ft. Worth Opera.
In 2019, Deborah was commissioned to write the opera libretto for "Murasaki's Moon" with composer Michi Wiancko, by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, On Site Opera and American Lyric Theater. It was produced at the Met museum in 2019.
In 2015 Deborah won the Liberty Live commission from Premiere Stages to write My Lord, What a Night, a one act play about Marian Anderson and Albert Einstein. It was produced at the Liberty Museum in 2016. She has since turned the play into a full length, which is being produced in a Rolling World Premiere by the National New Play Network. It premiered at the Contemporary American Theatre Festival in Shepherdstown, W. Va in 2019, and will be produced in 2020 at Orlando Shakes and Florida Studio Theatre.
Deborah was commissioned by the Anchorage Opera to write "The Polar Bat," a new adaptation of "Die Fledermaus" which was produced there in 2014. In 2015, the Anchorage Opera commissioned and produced her new libretto for Mozart's "The Impresario."
Deborah wrote the book and lyrics for "Crossing Over" an Amish Hip Hop musical with composer and co-lyricist Stephanie Salzman. It was developed in the ASCAP workshop, and also in the "Grow a Show" program at the Lied Center in Lincoln, Nebraska. It has also received development at NYC's Cap 21 and the Theatre Barn.
She is a member of ASCAP, The Dramatists Guild, Opera America, TCG and the National Theatre Conference.
Brevoort teaches at Columbia University, New York University, and Goddard College.

Personal life

Brevoort is married to the actor Chuck Cooper.

List of works

Plays