(Very) new playwright wins 2009 ArtsCenter Play Slam
2009 ArtsCenter Play Slam winner Debbie Barrett. Photo by David Fellerath.
“I’d never written a play before this spring. Since then, I’ve written nine of them.” The surprising words belong to nacent playwright Debbie Barrett, who apparently won the 2009 ArtsCenter Play Slam on Saturday night in Carrboro based on 22% of her total lifetime dramatic output — to date, at any rate.
Under rules similar to those used in poetry slams, a boisterous crowd of over 200 voted her tender, comic three-minute play Conception as one of the top five plays in the first round of competition. Then A Commitment in Ink sealed the deal in round two, garnering the newby playwright the coveted honorarium — 100 one dollar bills, tastefully arranged in a plexiglass fishbowl — along with crucial bragging rights until the 2010 competition.
Though Barrett’s works benefited from strong performances — on the basis of a total of ten minutes’ rehearsal time before the night of staged readings began — both also clearly featured intelligent writing that mixed humor with the humane.
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