Deborah Brevoort

Deborah Brevoort is a playwright and librettist from Alaska who now lives in the New York area. She is an alumna of New Dramatists, one of the original company members of Alaska’s Perseverance Theatre, and a co-founder of Theatre Without Borders, dedicated to international theatre exchange. In 2023, she was awarded the prestigious Campbell Opera Librettist Prize from Opera America. In 2024, she was named a Fulbright Specialist in theatre and opera by the US State Department, through which she led the first opera writing workshop in South Korea at the Seoul Institute of the Arts. 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. Published in the U.S. by DPS and No Passport Press, the play is produced around the world and is translated and published in nine languages.

She is also known for Blue Moon Over Memphis, her Noh Drama about Elvis, which toured Japan in 2024 and 2025 and will open the Autumn Arts Festival in Tokyo in October 2026. It is published by Applause Books in The Best American Short Plays. It is also published in Japanese by the Waseda Foundation of Tokyo, and in English by Methuen Drama of London. Deborah’s latest play, My Lord, What a Night, was produced at Ford’s Theatre in Washington DC after a rolling world premiere with National New Play Network at the Contemporary American Theatre Festival in WV, Orlando Shakespeare Theatre and Florida Studio Theatre. It began as a one-act play commissioned and produced by Premiere Stages in the NJ Liberty Live program. It was produced in critically acclaimed productions at George St. Playhouse and Penguin Rep in 2026.

The Blue-Sky Boys, a comedy about the role of the imagination in NASA’s Apollo program, was written with a commission from the EST/ Sloan project, where it won the Galileo Prize. It was produced at Barter Theatre and Capital Rep, directed by Gordon Greenberg, where it was the #1 critic’s pick for 2016. It was produced at Florida Studio Theatre in 2026 in a critically acclaimed production where it sold out and was extended. The Drolls, a full length comedy about the closure of the theatres in Puritan England in 1659 was commissioned by Florida Studio Theatre during the Covid-19 pandemic. It received a developmental production in the Pegasus Program at the University of Central Florida/Orlando Shakes in 2025.

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 also received an artistic excellence grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Poetry of Pizza, an Arab/American cross-cultural comedy about love, was produced at Jeff Daniel’s Purple Rose Theatre, Virginia Stage, Mixed Blood Theatre, California Rep, Centenary Stage, Theatre in the Square and Stage 3. Its Danish-language premiere was in Denmark in 2012. The Velvet Weapon, a backstage farce, was written with a grant from CEC ArtsLink and a playwriting fellowship from the NJ State Council on the Arts. It won the national playwriting contest at Trustus Theatre and received a workshop in LaunchPad at UC Santa Barbara. 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.

Deborah has written the librettos for numerous operas and the book and lyrics for several musicals. Her latest opera is The Knock, with composer Aleksandra Vrebalov. It was commissioned by Glimmerglass Opera, where it was made into a live-action film that premiered in 2021. It received its stage premiere at Cincinnati Opera in 2023 and was produced by Central City Opera and the Opera Theatre of the Rockies in Colorado in 2025. Quamino’s Map, an opera about American enslaved men who fought for the British during the Revolutionary War, was commissioned and produced by Chicago Opera Theatre in 2022. It was composed by Errollyn Wallen.

Murasaki’s Moon, an opera with Michi Wiancko, was commissioned by NYC’s Metropolitan Museum of Arts, On-Site Opera and American Lyric Theater. It premiered at the Met in 2019. Embedded, an opera inspired by Edgar Allan Poe written with composer Patrick Soluri, was commissioned by the American Lyric Theater (ALT). It won the Frontiers competition at Ft. Worth Opera, where it was produced in 2016. It premiered at the Fargo-Moorhead Opera and is being produced at Charlottesville Opera in 2026. Steal a Pencil for Me, an opera set in the Holocaust written with composer Gerald Cohen, won the 2016 Frontiers competition at Ft. Worth Opera and premiered at Opera Colorado in 2018. A recording was released by Sono Luminus in 2024.

The Red Thread with composer Wang Lu received a 2025 Discovery grant from Opera America. During the pandemic, she was commissioned by Fargo Moorhead Opera to write Dinner 4 3 with composer Michael Ching – based on Boccaccio’s The Decameron – as part of an opera web-series titled Tales from a Safe Distance, produced by the Decameron Opera Coalition. Albert Nobbs, an opera written with composer Patrick Soluri, won the 2019 Frontiers Competition at Ft. Worth Opera. It was a finalist for the 2018 Pellicciotti Prize in Opera composition. The Polar Bat, a new adaptation of Die Fledermaus set in the world of Alaskan reality TV, was commissioned and produced by the Anchorage Opera. She also wrote a new libretto for Mozart’s comic opera The Impresario for the Anchorage Opera.

Deborah is currently working on three new operas: Silverwing, a children’s opera based on the book by Ken Oppel with composer Dean Burry and commissioned by the Canadian Children’s Opera and Tulsa Opera, as well as The Snow Queen v. 2, set in the dark web, with BE Boykin and commissioned by Glimmerglass. She was awarded a Moody Fellowship at the LBJ Presidential Library to research Where Flowers Bloom, an opera about Lady Bird Johnson written with composer Laura Kaminsky.

Deborah also writes musicals. Coyote Goes Salmon Fishing, written with composer Scott Davenport 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. King Island Christmas, an oratorio with composer David Friedman, also won the Frederick Loewe Award. Based on the Alaskan children’s book by Jean Rogers, 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, also written with David Friedman, is based on an Alaskan children’s book by Jean Rogers and was workshopped at New Dramatists with Cameron McIntosh and Yip Harburg Foundation grants.

Deborah is currently writing Loving, a musical about the Loving vs. State of Virginia story with composer Diedre Murray, and Tiffany Girl, about Clara Driscoll, the true creator of the Tiffany Lamp, also with composer Julianne Wick Davis. She has also written Tundergarth, a Japanese Noh Drama, about the Lockerbie bombing of Pan Am 103, which is being composed by Rick Emmert for Theatre Nohgaku of Tokyo.

Alongside Laura Kaminsky, Deborah is the Creative Director of the Seattle Opera’s Creation Lab. She is the Librettist Mentor for the American Opera Initiative at the Washington National Opera and for American Lyric Theater’s Composer/Librettist Development program. She serves as an ongoing artistic mentor to the NBO Musical Theatre festival in Nairobi, Kenya.

Her awards and grants include: a 2025 Playwriting Fellowship from the NJ State Council on the Arts, the Paul Green Award from the National Theatre Conference for her musical book writing; 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, American Antiquarian Society, Brown University, The Harburg Foundation, Banff Playwright’s Colony and others. 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.

Deborah is a member of ASCAP and the National Theatre Conference. She is co-chair of the Opera Committee at the Dramatists Guild with fellow librettist Michael Korie. She holds MFAs in playwriting from Brown University and in musical theatre writing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She taught for many years in the NYU Graduate Musical Theatre Writing program and the MFA playwriting program at Columbia University. Her website is: DeborahBrevoort.com. Agents: Elaine Devlin Literary Agency in NYC ([email protected]) and Meg Davis, Ki Literary Agency, London ([email protected]).