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Deb Margolin

DEB MARGOLIN

  
Nationality:    USA
email:    n/a     Website:    n/a

Literary Agent:    Bret Adams Ltd  

Deb Margolin, a resident playwright at New Dramatists since 2008, is a playwright, actor and founding member of Split Britches Theatre Company. She is the author of nine full-length solo performance pieces, which she has toured throughout the United States, and is the recipient of a 1999-2000 OBIe Award for Sustained excEllence of Performance. Her multi-character play, Three Seconds in the Key, commissioned by the Public Theater and premiered by New Georges in New York, won the 2005 Kesselring Prize for Playwriting. Margo Jefferson of the New York Times called the work a fiercely good play. Why Cleaning Fails, a play that bridges simple acts of domestic cleaning with the massive act of cleaning called for by the events of 9/11, was presented by HeRe Arts Center in New York, and occassioned a New York Times House and Home Section look at the mess in Margolin's house. Her play, Critical Mass, an investigation of the imPulse to tell people what's wrong with them, was translated into Hebrew and presented in Israel. Her most recent play, Imagining Madoff, opened in the summer of 2010 at Stageworks/Hudson in New York, and will be presented at Theatre J in Washington, DC in the fall of this year, as well as several other regional Theaters around the U.S. A book of Deb's performance pieces and plays, entitled Of All the Nerve: Deb Margolin SOLO, was published in 1999 by Cassell/Continuum Press. Deb was awarded the 2005 Richard H. Brodhead Prize for Teaching excEllence at Yale University, and a 2008 Helen Merrill Distinguished Playwright award. Deb's work has been commissioned by the Jewish Museum of New York, Actors Theatre of Louisville, the Public, P.S. 122 and many other venues. She is honored to be a member of New Dramatists, and she lives in New Jersey, which she Adamantly denies.

Research:    Member of the Dramatists Guild of America (as at 2015)

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below is a list of Deb Margolin's plays - click on a Play Title for more information

         33 X 3         970-Debb         Bringing the Fishermen Home         Carthieves! Joyrides!         Clarisse And Larmon         Critical Mass         Expenses Of Rain, The         Gestation         Imagining Madoff         Index To Idioms: A Performance Novel         Lesbians Who Kill         Little Women: the Tragedy         O Wholly Night And Other Jewish Solecisms         O Yes I Will         Of All the Nerve         Of Mice, Bugs And Women         Rock Scissors Paper         Seven Palestinian Children         Snapshot         Three Seconds In the Key         Time Is the Mercy Of Eternity         Wholly Night and Other Jewish Solecisms

33 X 3

Synopsis:
33 x 3, a Split Britches reunion with Peggy Shaw Lois Weaver and Deb Margolin. Split Britches will be occupying La MaMa, reminding us of our shared histories and our equal stakes in the future.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
La MaMa First Floor theatre
74A East 4th Street, New York, NY 10003     18 Apr 2012

Organisations:
Split BriTheatre Companyhes

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

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Genre:
piece

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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970-Debb

970-Debb
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Notes:
-

1st Produced:
-    

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Contained in: "Of All the Nerve: Deb Margolin Solo" published by Continuum International Publishing 1999   978-0304703197

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Full-length for solo perfomer

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  1            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Bringing the Fishermen Home

Synopsis:
Jane Sand, a college professor with a young daughter, falls into a Baudelairean darkness when circumstances bring her into contact with the medical establishment. Charged with eroticism and obscured by comedy, her relationship with a witty, urbane surgeon degenerates into something half-holocaust half-rapture. eventually, a botched operation silences the woman forever, whereas the voices of age and inanity, medical jargon and human suffering, persist. A dreamlike journey into the unspoken and unspeakable erotics of medicine.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
Dixon Place
161 Chrystie Street, New York, NY 10002    

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

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Genre:
Drama full length

Parts:
Male:  4            Female:  2            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Carthieves! Joyrides!

Carthieves! Joyrides!
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Notes:
-

1st Produced:
-    

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Contained in: "Of All the Nerve: Deb Margolin Solo" published by Continuum International Publishing 1999   978-0304703197

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Full-length for solo perfomer

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  1            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Clarisse And Larmon

Synopsis:
This evening of new short plays is inspired by Susan Sontag's book On Photography. the producers describe it as illuminating "the complexities and questions that photography raises. From grieving parents left with only a photo of their deceased son to a cheeky calendar photo shoot, the collection of short plays looks at the medium from a variety of angles and offers searing, heartfelt and even funny riffs on Sontag's commentary. the evening serves as a modern call and response between cultural criticism and performing Arts."
nytheatre.com

Notes:
part of A Thousand Words: Seven Short Plays On Photography

1st Produced:
Interart Annex, NY     2006

Organisations:

1st Published:
Playscripts, Inc - New York   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Short Play One Act

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Critical Mass

Critical Mass
A critic is seated smack in the middle of a series of events he is meant to review, and people mistake each other for things they are not. A wild, vaudevillian comedy that investigates the critical impulse, from its most elegant to its most petty, Critical Mass features actors who run into the audience and criticize the show as if they were members of it, then return to their roles as performers. Actors regard one another's body type, weight gain, genital size, sexual agility; a cocktail party leads to tears, the theater critic weeps over his memory of a poignant performance of Beckett's Godot; booing at a sports arena is parsed as a form of criticism, the Narrator and the Critic find a way to come together and then fall inevitably apart, and criticism is regarded from every angle as a systemic, irreversible and terminal part of the human condition.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
P.S. 122
150 1st AVenue, New York, NY 10003    

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Contained in: "Of All the Nerve: Deb Margolin Solo" published by Continuum International Publishing 1999   978-0304703197

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
comedy

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  1            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Expenses Of Rain, The

Synopsis:
-

Notes:
part of Summer Shorts 4: This is the Annual program of new short plays At 59e59. Featured will be eight world premieres: Jonathan's Blaze by Christopher Stetson Boal, directed by Jose Angel Santana; Play With the Penguin by Roger Hedden, directed by Billy Hopkins; the Graduation Of Grace by Wendy Kesselman, director TBA; Fit by Neil Koenigsberg, directed by Merri Milwe; Romance by Neil LaBute, directed by Dolores Rice; the expenses Of Rain by Deb Margolin, directed by Laura Barnett; An Actor Prepares by Timothy Mason, directed by Maxwell Williams; Happy by Alan Zweibel, directed by Fred Berner.

1st Produced:
59e59 theaters
59 East 59th Street, New York, NY 10022     37/2010

Organisations:
ThroughLine Artists with J.J. Kandel and John McCormack

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
short play

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Gestation

Gestation
-

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
-    

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Contained in: "Of All the Nerve: Deb Margolin Solo" published by Continuum International Publishing 1999   978-0304703197

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Full-length for solo perfomer

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  1            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Imagining Madoff

Synopsis:
Unrepentant Ponzi-schemer Bernard Madoff sets the record straight from his prison cell, recounting an all-night study session with Holocaust survivor, poet and investment client, Solomon Galkin. With testimony from Madoff's personal secretary before the Securities and exchange Commission, we delve into the minds of two towering men, as their mutual will to confide and confess accelerates through the night.

Notes:
magining Madoff is A 2010 play by playwright Deb Margolin that tells the story of An imagined encounter between Bernard Madoff, the Admitted operator of what has been described As the largest Ponzi scheme in history, And his victims. Margolin had originally planned to use Nobel Laureate And Holocaust survivor elie Wiesel As A character representing A victim, but was obliged by legal threats to substitute A fictional character, whom she named Solomon Galkin.

1st Produced:
Stageworks Hudson     01 Jul 2010

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Play/Drama 90 min

Parts:
Male:  2            Female:  1            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Index To Idioms: A Performance Novel

Synopsis:
Based on a list of english language idioms brought home by her school-aged son, a woman decides to tell the story of her invisible, indelible life using the idioms as chapter headings. Index to Idioms: A Performance Novel is a love song to the body, a series of looks at the female body in pleasure, in illness, in youth, in middle age, and in the singular utility of motherhood. A series of poetic and humorous monologues in which quotidian events are marked with the tenderness of a life lived under the mantle of mortality, Index is a series of emotional snapshots that show a profound respect for the tiny points of evolution in her own spirit and those of her children. Her daughter realizing she's going to die someday while the Mother is peeing; the son apologizing to a piece of salmon for eating by reminding the fish that, in becoming part of the boy's body it can live on through him. A sense of joy and triumph pervades this one-woman performance novel.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, Tn    

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Comedy/Drama for solo performer

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  1            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Lesbians Who Kill

Synopsis:
-

Notes:
-

1st Produced:

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
-

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Little Women: the Tragedy

Synopsis:
-

Notes:
-

1st Produced:

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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O Wholly Night And Other Jewish Solecisms

Synopsis:
A Jewish woman discourses on the sexiness of waiting for the Messiah, a fundamental Jewish precept, and applies it comically and painfully to events remembered, simple moments of daily life: her grandmother in the old-lady home, her husband proposing marriage at a funeral home, her baby daughter melting into sleep in her arms, a dress she's been given by a woman who denies ever seeing that shmata. She posits that the Messiah could be anybody, and that we're all called upon at different times to act as Messianic stand-ins, so it's advisable to wear clean underwear at all times and treat everyone with grace and respect. A comical, wistful investigation of Jewish identity.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
Jewish Museum Of New Yor    

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
one act

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  1            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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O Yes I Will

Synopsis:
How much do we say when we speak? Yet what if we speak truth and aren't there to hear it? In Deb Margolin's O Yes I Will, a woman is amazed to learn that just prior to going under for surgery, she talked, talked, and talked for 12 straight minutes without stopping! This unmediated aria performed before a bunch of men in scrubs with knives was known to them but unknown to her. Was it love she talked about? Politics? Sex? Conspiracy theory? evasion? Ontology? Requests for a menage a trois, quatre or cinq? What kinds of things do you say when your body and mind are engaged but not married? This show offers five radically different possibilities of what she might have said outside the realm of conscious volition. In doing so, she explores the essential nature of language itself, the indomitable human spirit in the face of adversity, what it means to live in a woman's body, and the role of theatre and imagination in our lives
- press release

Notes:
-

1st Produced:

Organisations:
Dixon Place

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  1            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Of All the Nerve

Of All the Nerve
-

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
-    

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Contained in: "Of All the Nerve: Deb Margolin Solo" published by Continuum International Publishing 1999   978-0304703197

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Full-length for solo perfomer

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  1            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Of Mice, Bugs And Women

Of Mice, Bugs And Women
A comic but melancholy sound, like a burlesque sigh, the drone becomes a gnawing aural emblem of both time passing and time frozen for Ms. Margolin's ingeniously interconnected characters and the performer herself. . .When Ms. Margolin at last plays herself, a new mother trapped in the alien land of Secaucus, N.J., you become conscious of the psychological matrix from which these other personas were born and of the reasons, familiar to any caretaker of a young child, that hearing has eclipsed vision as the dominant sense in her life. . . a fresh, reverberant exploration of the petri dish of an artist's imagination.- Ben Brantley, New York Times

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
-    

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Contained in: "Of All the Nerve: Deb Margolin Solo" published by Continuum International Publishing 1999   978-0304703197

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
comedy

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  1            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Rock Scissors Paper

Synopsis:
An teenager tells the tale of her drug-dealing brother, her ill-fated family vacation, and her mother's inability to turn around and face facts. This piece is part ofSnapshot, an anthology of short plays. To perform this piece independently, click "Add to Shopping Cart" above. To perform this piece as part of the full-length collection, go to Snapshot.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Playscripts, Inc - New York   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
5-10 min Comic Drama

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  1            Other:  1 female

Further Reference:
-

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Seven Palestinian Children

Synopsis:
respose to Caryl Churchill's 10 minute play Seven Jewish Children

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
Theater J, 1529 16th St Nw, Washington, Dc     2009

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Short play

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Snapshot

Synopsis:
A photograph captures and documents a single moment in time and space -- a snapshot of history, of a reality bounded by the photo's frame. But what lies outside, beyond, behind the photograph? And what stories, memories, or associations does an image of place inspire? In this multi-writer project from Actors theatre of Louisville, a diverse assortment of talented playwrights encounter and transform Mount Rushmore, South Dakota, 1969, a compelling image of the monument by renowned photographer Lee Friedlander. their thought-provoking scenes and monologues range from delightful comedy to utterly serious tragedy, each approaching the photo's themes through a new lens. To perform the entire collection, click "Add to Shopping Cart" above. To perform an individual piece independently, click on its title below:

Notes:
-

1st Produced:

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Playscripts, Inc - New York   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
80-100 min Drama/Comedy

Parts:
Male:  11            Female:  11            Other:  11 males, 11 females (4-25 actors possible: 2-15 males, 2-15 females)

Further Reference:
-

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Three Seconds In the Key

Synopsis:
A woman and her son cope with the mother's serious illness by watching basketball, borrowing the physicality of these strong, healthy men in the absence of mother's health and son's maturity. During the course of their obsession with the team, one of the players comes out of the ecology of the television and into the woman's living room, cajoling her back into her body, from which she has been living in exile. Filial love, mortality, the beauty of the body, and the collapsible boundary between Blacks and Jews are all raised by the woman's struggle to come to terms with her son's favorite basketball player having stepped into her life, and with her own ambivalence about the beauty of life in the face of her mortality.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
P.S. 122
150 1st AVenue, New York, NY 10003     2001

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Playscripts, Inc - New York   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
90-105 min Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  5            Female:  1            Other:  1 child

Further Reference:
-

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Time Is the Mercy Of Eternity

Time Is the Mercy Of Eternity
When they Quiet Down, I Start : A monologue from the perspective of a dead suicide bomber who now collects the newly dead suicide bombers to bring them to the afterlife. Clarisse and Larmon: A husband and wife are left with only a picture of their son's foot after he is killed at war. the Rich Silk of It: Based on a true story of a young actress who was killed by her ex-fiancee after she broke up with him. Two actors morph into different characters, primarily playing the actress and the fiancee. Time is the Mercy of eternity: A woman won't leave a display bed in a department store, even after the pleadings of a female employee. the employee is forced to call security, but doesn't want to see the other woman hurt, as she is obviously already distraught.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
Entire Quartet, West End Theater, New York, NY    

Organisations:
Synapse Productions

1st Published:
Samuel French, Inc - New York >>>, 2007   978-0573651168

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
A Meditation in Four Acts Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  2            Female:  2            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Wholly Night and Other Jewish Solecisms

Wholly Night and Other Jewish Solecisms
-

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
-    

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Contained in: "Of All the Nerve: Deb Margolin Solo" published by Continuum International Publishing 1999   978-0304703197

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Monologue play

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  1            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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