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Milligan to premiere a new play by local playwright Deborah DeGeorge Harbin
MILLIGAN COLLEGE, Tenn. (March 7, 2012) — By day, Deborah DeGeorge Harbin works in Milligan College’s office of academic affairs, keeping her administrative tasks on cue and running smoothly. During evenings and weekends, she cues her creativity and pursues her passion ― playwriting.
Harbin, a resident of Elizabethton, Tenn., is an award-winning playwright who has written 10 plays and shorts that have been produced in theaters across the country. Working full time and writing part time is often a balancing act for Harbin, but watching her scripts go from the page to the stage makes it all worthwhile for the local playwright.
“When I watch one of my plays being performed, at its best, it feels like a miracle is happening,” Harbin said. “I have an idea and then there it is on stage in front of me.”
Harbin will have an opportunity to watch her new play, “The Quickening,” come to life when it premieres at Milligan March 23-25 in the McGlothlin-Street Theatre of the Gregory Center for the Liberal Arts. Performances on March 23 and 24 begin at 7:30 p.m. The March 25 matinee performance begins at 2:30 p.m. All seats are $5. Advance tickets go on sale in the Milligan Bookstore on Friday, March 9.
“My work tends to have elements of the supernatural and science, and audiences will see this in ‘The Quickening,’” she said. “My plays are very much about the way I view wonder in the world.”
In “The Quickening,” the main character, Hannah Marks, dreams of a different kind of world, full of open fields and endangered species living in peace. But as the head of the Voluntary Human Reduction Movement, an environmental group with an unpopular message, she is sick of fighting an uphill battle and stumbles on a chance to shut down a fertility business run by Lillian Marioni, a self-styled miracle worker whose abilities confound medical science.
“The play is really about how people try to find happiness and satisfaction in an uncertain world,” Harbin said. “People look in different places — in jobs, in causes — for happiness. But in its primordial form, it’s found in love, family and relationships.”
Harbin, 31, also incorporated some autobiographical elements in “The Quickening.”
“I am at the age when I am considering whether I’ll have children,” she said. “I’ve watched more women putting off childbearing, and then have seen the way women come to rely more and more on intervention.”
Harbin often finds inspiration for her plays from her own experiences.
“Every writer has his or her own process,” Harbin said. “But the two things I’ve had the most success with are writing about things that spring from my own experiences and doing adaptations of other works.”
After “The Quickening” her next project, which was commissioned by the Scopes Festival in Dayton, Tenn., is an adaptation of the famous Scopes Trial, based on the trial transcript. Held each July to celebrate the town’s role in the trial, this year’s Scopes Festival will feature Harbin’s exploration of the factors that brought the trial, and the attention of the world, to Dayton.
Harbin has developed many contacts in the theater world since she wrote her first play at Messiah College (Grantham, Penn.).
“I was an English major with an emphasis in creative writing,” said Harbin, a 2003 Messiah graduate. “For my senior project, I wrote a play called ‘Constellations,’ and it won the 2003 Marc A. Klein Student Playwriting Award. That gave me a much clearer direction and proved to me that I could do this.”
In 2007, Harbin earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in playwriting from Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. While a student there, she wrote several plays including “The Trouble with Flowers,” “Where the River Forks” and “Laws of Construction.”
Deborah and her husband, Jeff, moved to East Tennessee in 2008, when Jeff accepted a position as user services librarian at Milligan. Later, Deborah began a position as the administrative assistant for Milligan’s vice president for academic affairs. However, she continued to write and send out her work across the country.
Her most notable production to date is “Radius: Universal Robot,” a reimagining of the Karel Čapek classic. It was presented by The Run of the Mill Theatre at Baltimore’s Load of Fun Gallery and Theatre in 2011.
Working on Milligan’s campus has provided additional opportunities for Harbin to further her playwriting career. She taught a semester of “Writing for Stage and Screen” and has worked closely with Milligan’s theater professors to produce several full-length and one-act plays at Milligan. She often borrows the energy and talent of Milligan students to fine tune and test her work.
“There are so many enthusiastic young actors all around Milligan’s campus,” Harbin said. “They’re always willing to read a script for me. A group of students and I took one of my short plays, ‘Hypochondria,’ to the Asheville Fringe Festival, and then later performed it here at Milligan.”
In April 2011, “Hypochondria” was produced again in Seattle, Wash., as part of Stone Soup Theatre’s Double (XX) Fest for female playwrights.
Harbin is hoping for the same success for “The Quickening,” which is directed by Dr. Dennis Elkins, professor of the practice of theater and humanities at Milligan, and stage managed by Candice Schlaegel, a senior from Lewis Center, Ohio. Lighting and set design is by Pamela Adolphi, resident designer at Milligan.
The company features more than 20 members from Milligan and the community, including senior Corri Richardson of Kingsport, Tenn., in the role of Hannah Marks, and Michael Martin of Johnson City, Tenn., as Lillian Marioni.
Beginning March 9, tickets are available at the Milligan College Bookstore, open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., or by calling 423.461.8733. All major credit cards are accepted. Tickets will also be available at the box office 45 minutes prior to each performance.
For more information about arts events at Milligan, visit www.milligan.edu/arts.