Plays, Poems, Productions, and Prints
Deborah Gearing
My early working life was as an actor and following apprentice years in Berlin, I came to the UK to work in small scale touring, seeing a lot of life from the back of a van. I had children, and moved into youth theatre and facilitating groups, including long term projects with NSPCC, Barnardos, mental health service users and ex-offenders. Whilst I was making plays with other people, in fact, writing plays for them, I didn’t consider myself a writer. It was in the early 2000’s that I joined a playwriting course run by John Burgess at the (now defunct) Nuffield Theatre and began to understand that I could be a writer: BURN came out of that.
Now I work at writing in many different ways: commissioned plays, devised plays, translating plays and film. Poetry figures now, as does printmaking – and I find myself incorporating these things in projects.
I love writing. I’m privileged to support others in their writing: academic writing as a Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund, playwriting with Graeae on their Write to Play project and for the last eleven years I have worked as a mentor and now associate playwright on the National Theatre’s New Views scheme – an inspiring project supporting young people to begin playwriting.
I love theatre in unexpected places and occasionally make shows with a great and generous group of actors called The Fuse – keeping the spark alive.
I’m a funeral celebrant with Humanists UK. Ritual matters.
Growing up I loved to play by the river. BURN and UPBEAT came from the river. THE EEL RUN project centres on the river, drawing attention to an endangered species.
I guess I love rivers.
On the following pages you can read about my plays; poetry and residency stuff.
In the meantime, here's a link to me reading:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBT717gdgoo
and there's a wee pamphlet of
THE TURNKEY'S WIFE and other poems
in Gods House Tower, Southampton.
photo by Frankie Elsing
