Professor Deborah Brevoort Joins Florida Studio Theatre's Playwright Collective

By
Amanda Breen
October 30, 2020
Deborah Brevoort

Adjunct Associate Professor Deborah Brevoort was invited to join Florida Studio Theatre’s (FST) Playwright Collective. Earlier this year, Brevoort was hired as a staff writer for FST’s eight-week-long Playwrights Project, where she was one of 33 playwrights, sketch comedy writers, and musical theatre developers to collaborate on a full-length play titled The Drolls

FST is a contemporary theatre company based in Sarasota. It was founded in 1973 by artist Jon Spelman, who brought performances to isolated audiences in nursing homes, community centers, migrant camps, and prisons. In the intervening decades, FST has become a five-theatre complex and has presented its programs to over 230,000 children and adults.

Originally established in 2017, the Playwright Collective plays a significant role in FST’s New Play Development Program, which aims to find, develop, and present “the best new plays being written in America today.” Brevoort joins twelve other playwrights in the Collective, which affords its members the necessary opportunities, resources, and feedback to take new plays through every stage of development.

In addition to having the support of FST’s creative team and the option to work together on their own projects, Collective members teach in the FST School, take part in forum discussions with FST patrons, and offer guidance to emerging playwrights. 

According to Broadway World, more than a dozen new plays are already on their way to production, and FST’s Producing Artistic Director Richard Hopkins notes, "These writers are crafting plays featuring a diversity of voices and sharing a range of experiences that will speak to a living, breathing, fully-engaged Sarasota audience.”

Brevoort has written plays, musicals, and opera librettos. Best known for her internationally-produced play The Women of Lockerbie, Brevoort is a three-time winner of the Frontiers Competition at Fort Worth Opera and a two-time winner of the Frederick Loewe Award in Musical Theatre. Brevoort’s Blue Moon Over Memphis, a Noh Drama about Elvis Presley, is touring internationally, and her other plays, which include The Poetry of PizzaThe Blue-Sky BoysThe Comfort TeamThe Velvet WeaponSigns of Life, and Into the Fire, have been produced in theatres across the US. Her most recent play, My Lord, What a Night, will be performed at Ford’s Theatre in Washington DC beginning in January of 2021. 

She is a mentor to the NBO Musical Theatre Initiative in Nairobi, Kenya and was one of the original company members with Perseverance Theatre in Alaska. Brevoort is an alumna of New Dramatists and a co-founder of Theatre Without Borders. Her plays have been published by Samuel French, Applause Books, Dramatist Play Service, and No Passport Press. Brevoort is a member of the National Theatre Conference, ASCAP, Opera America, TCG, and the Dramatists Guild.