Deb Margolin

{{Short description|American performance artist, playwright}} {{Infobox writer  | name = Deb Margolin | image = | imagesize = | alt = | caption = | pseudonym = | birth_name = | birth_date =  | birth_place = | death_date = | death_place = | occupation = Performance artist and playwright | nationality = American | ethnicity = | religion = | citizenship = | education = | alma_mater = | period = | genre = | subject = | movement = | notableworks = | spouse = | partner = | children = | relatives = | influences = | influenced = | awards = | signature = | website = {{URL|http://www.debmargolin.com}} | portaldisp = }} '''Deb Margolin''' is an American performance artist and playwright. She came to prominence in the 1980s in the feminist political theatre troupe Split Britches, which she co-founded with Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw.<ref name="Case2013">{{cite book |first=Sue-Ellen |last=Case |title=Split Britches: Lesbian Practice/Feminist Performance |date=1996 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XbD7AQAAQBAJ&pg=PA6 |access-date=2013-11-05 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-136-16559-7 |pages=6– |via=Google Books}}</ref> Margolin has since created a string of one-woman shows. A compilation of her texts, ''Of All The Nerve: Deb Margolin SOLO'', was published in 1999 by Cassell/Continuum Press. Literary theorist Lynda Hart edited and wrote a commentary on each piece.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.yale.edu/theaterstudies/people/margolin.html |title=Yale University lecturer description. |work=Yale University |access-date=2006-12-19 |archive-date=2006-09-20 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060920230617/http://www.yale.edu//theaterstudies/people/margolin.html |url-status=dead }}</ref>

Margolin was the recipient of a 1999-2000 Obie Award for Sustained Excellence in Performance. In 2005, Margolin won the Joseph Kesselring Prize for her play, ''Three Seconds in the Key,'' a multi-character play which reflected her own experiences with Hodgkin's Disease.

She currently teaches playwrighting and performance as an associate professor at Yale University. Her work includes ''O Yes I Will'', a detailed account of her experiences and insights on being under general anaesthesia.

Margolin was forced to revise her 2010 play ''Imagining Madoff'' after legal threats from Elie Wiesel, who was one of Bernard Madoff's victims and had called Madoff a "scoundrel" but had refused to allow a character representing him and using his name to be used in the play.<ref>Healy, Patrick. [https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/20/theater/20madoff.html "The Play on Madoff, Without Wiesel"], ''The New York Times'', July 19, 2010. Accessed July 19, 2010.</ref>

In the 1990s, Margolin participated in the Zale-Kimmerling Writer in Residence program at Tulane University in New Orleans, LA. In 2018, she donated a large quantity of her personal materials such as journals, manuscripts, newspaper articles, flyers, ephemera, poetry, and correspondence to the Newcomb Archives at Tulane, forming the Deb Margolin Collection, which spans the years 1970 to 2016. In the spring of 2020, an exhibit entitled "Deb Margolin's Performance Composition: Writing and Embodying" was shown at Tulane. It focused on Margolin's process of performance composition by displaying her notes and writing (both handwritten and typed) from her work as a university professor, actor, and playwright.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Tulane Online Exhibits|url=https://exhibits.tulane.edu/exhibit/deb-margolins-performance-composition-writing-and-embodying/|access-date=2020-11-25|website=exhibits.tulane.edu}}</ref>

==Works== {{Div col|colwidth=30em}} * ''The God Show'' (1982) * ''Coupla Weirdos'' (1986) * ''In a Vacuum'' (1988) * ''What's with Hamlet?'' (1989) * ''Of All the Nerve'' (1989) * ''You Don't Even Know Where the Strike Zone Is'' (1990) * ''970-DEBB'' (1990) * ''Gestation'' (1991) * ''Lesbians Who Kill'' (1992) * ''The Breaks'' (1993), written with Rae C. Wright * ''Of Mice, Bugs and Women'' (1994) * ''Carthieves! Joyrides!'' (1995) * ''Bearing Witnesses'' (1996) * ''O Wholly Night & Other Jewish Solecisms'' (1996) * ''Critical Mass'' (1997) * ''Bringing the Fishermen Home'' (1998) * ''Three Seconds in the Key'' (2001) * ''Rock, Scissors, Paper'' (2002) * ''Why Cleaning Fails'' (2002) * ''Snapshot'' (2002) * ''Index to Idioms'' (2003) * ''The Rich Silk Of It'' (2005) * ''Time Is The Mercy of Eternity'' (2006) * ''Clarisse and Larmon'' (2006) * ''O Yes I Will'' (2006) * ''Imagining Madoff'' (2010) * ''Good Morning Anita Hill It’s Ginni Thomas I Just Wanted To Reach Across the Airwaves and the Years and Ask You To Consider Something I Would Love You To Consider an Apology Sometime and Some Full Explanation of Why You Did What You Did With My Husband So Give It Some Thought and Certainly Pray About This and Come To Understand Why You Did What You Did Okay Have a Good Day.'' (2011)<ref>{{cite web |title=All For One Fest: Good Morning Anita Hill |url=https://www.afo.nyc/good-morning-anita-hill |access-date=25 September 2025}}</ref> *''Turquoise'' (2014)<ref>{{cite web |title=Turquoise - Deb Margolin |date=16 June 2014 |url=https://thefrontrowcenter.com/2014/06/turquoise-deb-margolin/}}</ref> *''8 Stops'' (2015)<ref>{{cite news |last1=Gates |first1=Anita |title=Review: In '8 Stops,' Finding Humor Amid Hardships |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/22/theater/review-in-8-stops-finding-humor-amid-hardships.html |access-date=25 September 2025 |work=New York Times |date=April 21, 2015}}</ref> *''Just Give Me One Half-Hour With My Mother'' (2020)<ref>{{cite web |title=Deb Margolin's – Just Give Me One Half Hour With My Mother (Dixon Place Benefit Event) |url=https://dixonplace.org/performances/deb-margolins-with-my-mother/ |access-date=25 September 2025}}</ref> *''This is Not a Time of Peace'' (2024)<ref>{{cite web |title=New Light Theater Project: This is Not a Time of Peace (Production Page) |url=https://www.newlighttheaterproject.com/this-is-not-a-time-of-peace |access-date=25 September 2025}}</ref> {{div col end}}

==References== {{Reflist}}

==External links== *[http://www.debmargolin.com Official Website of Deb Margolin]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Margolin, Deb}} Category:American dramatists and playwrights Category:American performance artists Category:Feminist theatre Category:Year of birth missing (living people) Category:Living people Category:Jewish American artists Category:Yale University faculty Category:21st-century American Jews