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.

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.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Deborah was commissioned by the Florida Studio Theatre to write a full length comedy called "The Drolls" about the outlaw actors and blackamoors who kept the theatre alive during the Puritan crackdown in England in the 1600's.

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 and Signs of Life. 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.

She moved to New York City to attend New York University's Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program where she received an MFA.

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.

"Into the Fire" won the Weissberger Award in 1999 and was published by Samuel French in 2000.

It was developed at the National Playwrights Conference at the O’Neill and the Australian National Playwright’s Conference.

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.

"Blue Moon Over Memphis," a Noh Drama about Elvis Presley, was published by Applause Books in The Best American Short Plays of 2004 and in the Journal of the Noh Research Archives, Musashino University, Tokyo, Japan (in Japanese and English).

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 nine languages.

There have been over 800 productions of the play worldwide.

Brevoort's plays and musicals often use theatrical conventions and forms from around the world to explore contemporary American subjects.[4] She wrote a Japanese Noh Drama about Elvis Presley titled "Blue Moon Over Memphis"; a musical comedy inspired by world mythology and Saturday morning cartoons titled "Coyote Goes Salmon Fishing," with composer Scott Davenport Richards; and a holiday musical written in the form of an oratorio, titled "King Island Christmas," with composer David Friedman, based on the Alaskan children's book of the same title.

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.

Deborah's other plays include:

"My Lord, What a Night," about the friendship between Marian Anderson and Albert Einstein.

It is optioned for West End and Broadway productions after being produced at the historic Ford’s Theatre in Washington DC to critical acclaim.

It was developed through a rolling world premiere at Contemporary American Theatre Festival (CATF), Florida Studio Theatre, and Orlando Shakespeare Theatre.

It was originally commissioned as a one act play through the Liberty Live program at Premiere Stages.

The Poetry of Pizza which uses 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.

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 and was the winner of the Galileo Prize from EST.

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.

The Comfort Team, a play about military spouses, with a commission from Virginia Stage.

It received an artistic excellence grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and the first-ever theatre grant from the Harpo Marx Foundation.

It has been touring internationally since 2015 in a traditional Noh production by Theatre Nohgaku of Tokyo.

In 2024 it will tour Japan.