Deborah Yarchun is a New Jersey-born, Air Force-raised and Austin-rooted playwright; her plays are just as geographically discombobulated. Her plays have been developed through the Great Plains Theater Conference, Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, Sanctuary Playwrights Theater, and WordBRIDGE, and produced through the Young Playwrights Festival XXIV (at Playwrights Horizons), Theater Master’s National MFA Playwrights Festival, Estrogenius Festival, the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, and at theaters and universities across the United States and in Canada. Deborah’s honors include the Kennedy Center’s Jean Kennedy Smith Award, University of Iowa’s Richard Maibaum Playwriting Award, and the Kennedy Center’s VSA Arts Playwright Discovery Award. She has also been a finalist for the Heideman Award. Deborah is in her final year of her MFA at the Iowa Playwrights Workshop where she is an Iowa Arts Fellow.
Deborah on...
The Process... I typically spend several months gathering notes and planning before I commit to writing a draft. I keep a notebook and write any idea that strikes until I have a clear sense of the characters, the story and the play’s world. Sometimes during this stage I find I’m sketching scenes, so the play is half-written by the point I officially start writing. When I’m working on a draft, I do my best to commit roughly five hours a day; either all at once or in two blocks of 2-3 hours.
Satisfaction That awesome occasion when you see your work performed and the audience reacts by leaning forward or laughing. When you’ve written honestly it’s extremely satisfying to learn you’re not alone. I also find it’s satisfying when you think you’ve written something disastrous and you’re ready to stick it in a drawer and never look at it again, and then you glance at it with fresh eyes in a week and find it’s truthful and funny. It’s that oh-so satisfying recognition that your inner critic is delusional.
Knowing I don’t think I’ve arrived at a point where I see this as viable. But I do experience occasional glimmers of hope. Over the past two years, through graduate school, I’ve been piecing together ideas on how one can potentially sustain oneself financially through teaching, grants, productions, etc. It’s not so easy, and hardly a lavish lifestyle, but it seems if you’re willing to expand your definition of what it means to be a playwright, and also work really hard, it’s not quite the passionate lunge towards poverty I’d imagined. If you stick to the more specific definitions of being a playwright (one who writes plays), with the exception of a few outliers, it seems easier to see playwriting as more of a devotion than a “career.”
Inspiration
As far as specific works that inspire me,a lot do. For a lot of different reasons. I’m taking an Ibsen class at Iowa and I am impressed by how tightly woven and layered his work is. Ibsen’s a master of craft. I’m also inspired by Caryl Churchill and Naomi Wallace. Since high school I’ve really admired Dan Dietz’ writing. A lot. Most recently, his short play OT. I also really dug Lucas Hnath’s playDeath Taxat this year’s Humana Festival for its structure. It takes this leap between Act I and II that shifted everything about the play I’d assumed I was seeing. Lynn Nottage’sRuinedremains one of the most visceral experiences I’ve had in the theater. Tight, smart, visceral writing floors me. Some non-theater inspirations: M.C. Escher, Jorge Luis Borges, Philip Glass, most Charlie Kaufman.
TheFirst Time
I’ll never forget. When I was 15, I won second place in a state-wide high school playwriting competition. As part of the prize, my play was performed at the Texas Educational Theater Association Conference at a Hyatt Hotel in Austin, TX. I entered a ballroom with a make-shift stage at its center and a sea of what must have been at least 300 chairs. I sat in the front row and expected maybe a handful of students would join me. Then the doors opened, and there was this cavalcade. I must have been slotted during an open hour and a half of the conference. Every chair was filled. Students sat in the aisles and stood not just in the back, but on the sides. I was petrified. Each program shuffle during the performance felt amplified. But then they reacted. They leaned forward. They laughed. There were moments that totally failed and moments that genuinely seemed to land. And I remember watching students actually crying at the climax of my play. I felt both frozen and accomplished and conscious of my play’s formula, since it was totally formulaic kind of like an insane puppeteer. I don’t know if that sort of intense feeling before seeing your work with an audience ever fades. But I like to think since the first time I’ve learned to lighten up.
Advice
This semester I’m teaching my first Playwriting I class. On my syllabus under “expectations” I wrote that I expect my students to respond to their peers’ work with respect, but I also added, “I expect you to regard your own work with respect.” I think that’s important. I think there’s a certain type of writer allergic to their work. I am a bit of a perfectionist. Over the years I’ve come to realize you shouldn’t give yourself too much hell for what’s not working. Celebrate all of it. Celebrate what you learned from it. Each play is really a glorious stepping stone to the next. Step onto it, but don’t stomp on it. Let it propel you.October 26 @ 8pm
The Becket Theatre at Theatre Row
The Samuel French Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival
For more information on Deborah's past, present, and future endeavors, check here.Follow Deborah on Twitter