About the Playwright Deborah Brevoort

Get to know playwright Deborah Brevoort’s inspiration behind My Lord, What a Night.

Orlando Shakes: What themes or ideas are you focusing on with this play?

Deborah Brevoort: I was raised in the NJ suburbs, on a street where every house was identical except for the color. My mother, a housewife, loved to read and our house (the pink one on the block) was filled with books. Unfortunately for her—and lucky for me—there was no one else on our street who shared her passion for reading. And so, my mother began feeding me books at a young age—books far beyond my years—just so she could have someone to discuss them with. When I was seven, she gave me a copy of Marian Anderson’s autobiography, My Lord, What a Morning. Anderson, one of the world’s greatest-ever singers, suffered endless indignities because she was Black. It is a book I have never forgotten, and so, when I got the opportunity to write a play based on a historical event, I jumped at the chance to write about the night in Princeton in April, 1937 when Marian Anderson was denied a room at the Nassau Inn.

My Lord, What a Night not only gave me the chance to revisit a beloved book from my childhood, it also enabled me to explore an issue that has since become quite personal. I am married to an African American man, who has been racially profiled by NJ police on five different occasions. Each time this happens the question of how to respond presents itself. Do we fight it? Or do we “let it go?” We have done both on different occasions, but no matter how we choose, there is always a price to pay.

This is the choice that Marian Anderson faced in Princeton; it’s the choice that Albert Einstein faced as a Jew in Germany; and that Abraham Flexner and Mary Church Terrell faced as well. It is a choice that Jews and Blacks are having to make today with greater frequency.

I decided to write this play as a historical drama, and worked hard to render the language, mores and manners of 1937 with great specificity. My reason was simple. The more “1937” the play is, the more we will see 2018, and how far we haven’t come.

Orlando Shakes: What is the biggest challenge about crafting a new play?

Deborah: I have three personal rules when I sit down to write a new work. The first is that I need to write about something that is new to me in some way. Something I don’t know. This is to ensure that the play never becomes solipsistic, and that it also becomes an exploration of something I am struggling to understand—not a statement of what I think. The second is: there must be something, craft wise, that I haven’t done before, or that I don’t know how to do. This is to ensure that I keep growing as a playwright, and expanding my writing abilities. And the third rule is: I am not allowed to repeat myself. Or, in current parlance, to “brand” myself. This is to protect against “formula” writing and artistic death.

This means I am always uncomfortable while I’m writing because I am in unfamiliar territory and in a constant state of “unknowing.” This is what is difficult and challenging about writing a new play—I’m always in the dark.

Orlando Shakes: Who or what was your biggest inspiration for becoming a playwright?

Deborah: I am utterly promiscuous in my tastes; I love theatre in all its form: tragedy, farce, opera, Noh drama, experimental theatre and old-fashioned American musicals—you name it. I also travel a lot internationally and am influenced by world theatre. In short, I am so deeply influenced by so many writers and theatre forms that I can’t name just one. But I have an enormous personal debt to Paula Vogel who was the first to spot my writing talent and who gave me a spot in her playwriting program at Brown. She changed my life. Because of her I am now a professional playwright.

Orlando Shakes: If you could only describe your play using four words, what would they be?

Deborah: Oh, I’m no good at this keyword stuff. (Really, I’m not.) Marian Anderson? Einstein? Civil Rights? I don’t know. (Sorry.)

Orlando Shakes: What is unique about your writing process?

Deborah: I am enormously disciplined as a writer. I don’t need deadlines to write—although a deadline does help to keep a project moving forward. I can write anywhere, but I prefer to write at my desk at home. I write in the morning. When I get stuck, I go swimming. After about 15-20 minutes of “laps” I usually get unstuck.

Orlando Shakes: Aside from this play what is next for you? 

Deborah: I write in three different forms: plays, musicals and operas. I like to have one of each in process at all times. My next opera, called Murasaki’s Moon, with Michi Wiancko, will open at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in May, produced by On Site Opera, American Lyric Theater and the Met’s LiveArts Program. On the musical front, I am working with Diedre Murray on Loving a new musical about the Loving vs. State of Virginia story, and am starting a new musical with Julianne Wick Davis called Tiffany Girls, about the recent revelation that shook the art world when it was discovered that a woman named Clara Driscoll designed the Tiffany Lamps (not Louis Tiffany). On the playwriting front, my next play will be a comedy set in 1659 called The Drolls. On January 28 and 29, Crossing Over, my Amish hip-hop musical, written with Stephanie Salzman, will have two concert readings at NYC’s York Theatre.

ABOUT DEBORAH BREVOORT
Deborah Brevoort is the award-winning author of plays, musicals and operas. She is best known for The Women of Lockerbie, which is produced internationally. Other plays include: Blue Moon Over Memphis, a Noh Drama about Elvis, The Poetry of Pizza, The Blue-Sky Boys (workshopped at Playfest), The Comfort Team, The Velvet Weapon, Into the Fire, and Signs of Life. A two-time winner of the Frederick Loewe award for King Island Christmas with David Friedman and Coyote Goes Salmon Fishing with Scott Richards, her current musical projects include: Crossing Over, an Amish hip-hop musical with Stephanie Saltzman, and Loving (about Loving vs. Virginia) with Diedre Murray. In May, her new opera Murasaki’s Moon will premiere at the Metropolitan Museum of Arts. Her plays are published by Applause Books, Samuel French, DPS, and No Passport Press. She teaches at Goddard College, Columbia University, and NYU’s Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program.

Don’t miss Deborah Brevoort’s My Lord, What a Night at PlayFest presented by Harriett’s Charitable Trust.