Deborah Brevoort is a playwright and librettist from Alaska who now lives in the New York City area. She is an alumna of New Dramatists, one of the original company members of Perseverance Theatre in Juneau, Alaska and a co-founder of Theatre Without Borders, a group of individual artists dedicated to international theatre exchange.

She is best known for her play The Women of Lockerbie, which won the Kennedy Center’s Fund for New American Plays Award and the silver medal in the Onassis International Playwriting Competition. It was produced in London at the Orange Tree, off-Broadway at the New Group and Women’s Project and in Los Angeles at the Actors Gang and Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum. It has been produced all over the US and has been translated into seven languages. Published by DPS and No Passport Press, the play has had over 450 productions to date.

The Comfort Team, about military wives during the surge of Iraq, was written with a commission from the Virginia Stage Company, where it premiered in 2012. It was the first-ever theatre project to receive a grant from Harpo Marx’s Harpo Foundation. It received an artistic excellence grant from the NEA. It is published by No Passport Press.

The Poetry of Pizza, a cross cultural comedy about love, was produced at the Purple Rose Theatre,Virginia Stage, Mixed Blood Theatre, California Rep, Centenary Stage, Theatre in the Square and Stage 3. It premiered in Denmark, in Danish, in 2012.

The Blue-Sky Boys, a comedy about the role of the imagination in NASA’s Apollo program, was written with a commission from the Ensemble Studio Theatre/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Science & Technology project. It was workshopped at the Orlando Shakespeare Theatre’s Playfest and premiered at the Barter Theatre in Virginia in 2010.

The Velvet Weapon, a back stage farce was written with a grant from CEC ArtsLink and a playwriting fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.

Blue Moon Over Memphis, her Noh Drama about Elvis Presley, is published by Applause Books in “The Best American Short Plays.” It is published in Japanese and is slated for a traditional Noh production by Theatre Nohgaku who will tour it beginning in 2016.

Into the Fire won the Weissberger Award and is published by Samuel French.

Signs of Life won the Jane Chambers Award, a Rockefeller Foundation grant, and the gold medal in the Pinter Review Prize for Drama. It is published by Samuel French.

On the musical front, she wrote the librettos, books and lyrics for: Embedded, an opera inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, with composer Patrick Soluri. It was commissioned by the American Lyric Theater (ALT). Selected for the inaugural Frontiers Festival at Ft Worth Opera in 2013, it premiered at the Fargo-Moorhead Opera in 2014 in a co-production with ALT and Ft. Worth Opera.

Steal a Pencil for Me, a full length opera with composer Gerald Cohen is based on the book of the same title. There were concert stagings in NYC in 2013 and 2014.

Crossing Over, an Amish hip hop musical with composer Stephanie Salzman (co-lyricist). Chosen for the inaugural ASCAP Musical Theatre Festival at the Lied Center, 2013. It received a workshop in 2014 in the Lied Center’s Grow a Show program and a residency at CAP 21 in NYC.

The Polar Bat, a new adaptation of Die Fledermaus, set in the world of reality TV, for the Anchorage Opera, premiered in 2014.

Deborah wrote a new libretto for Mozart's The Impresario, which was commissioned by and produced at the Anchorage Opera in 2015.

King Island Christmas, with composer David Friedman, which won the Frederick Loewe Award. An Alaskan story inspired by the children’s book of the same title, the cast album was produced by 12-time Grammy winner Thomas Z. Shepard, featuring Chuck Cooper and Marin Mazzie. There have been over 60 productions in the US, Canada and Australia.

Goodbye My Island, based on the Alaskan children’s book, with David Friedman. It was workshopped at New Dramatists with grants from Cameron McIntosh and Yip Harburg Foundations.

Coyote Goes Salmon Fishing, with composer Scott Richards, won the Frederick Loewe Award and was produced at the University of Houston by Stuart Ostrow and Perseverance Theatre in Alaska, directed by Molly Smith.

Deborah has been commissioned to write a new play about Martha Washington for Virginia Stage, tentatively titled Homespun.

She also received a Liberty Live commission from Premiere Stages in 2015 to write My Lord What a Night about Maria Anderson and Albert Einstein.

No Passport Press will publish Deborah Brevoort: Three Comedies in the fall of 2014. It will include The Poetry of Pizza, The Blue-Sky Boys, and The Velvet Weapon.

Deborah received the Paul Green Award from the National Theatre Conference for her musical book writing and a Performing Artist/Writer Research Fellowship at the American Antiquarian Society in 2012. She has received grants and commissions from the NEA, Rockefeller Foundation, NYFA, CEC Arts Link, New Jersey Arts Council, Alaska State Council on the Arts, Danish American Society, Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, Brown University, The Harburg Foundation & Banff Playwright's Colony. She received the Joe Calloway Award and was a MacDowell Fellow. She has done residencies in Canada, Mexico, Australia, Denmark and the Czech and Slovak Republics. She is a resident artist at the American Lyric Theater.

She holds MFA’s in playwriting from Brown University and in musical theatre writing from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts where she was the Yip Harburg Fellow. She currently teaches in the NYU graduate musical theatre writing program and in the MFA playwriting program at Goddard College. Her website is: www.DeborahBrevoort.com. Agent: Elaine Devlin Literary Agency (NYC) Edevlinlit@aol.com