Deborah FORTSON

Deborah Lake Fortson Guzzetti

Deborah's 2011 Autobiography

In college I did theater and music and English Lit - inspired of course by Miss Higgins. Afterwards, I went to London with Alfred Guzzetti, who had written an opera I performed in. I had to marry him to get the free boat trip - and we’ve been together – more or less – ever since. We got a job as photo technicians in Florence, Italy at the end of the year in London and spent the summer in an olive grove. Then back to Boston: I worked as a high school teacher for McLean Hospital. We taught in South Carolina one of the freedom summers. Like everyone in Cambridge we were caught up in the idea of changing the world. In 1968 I ran a political street theater and worked at the Democratic Convention -- masses of cops and the tear gas smell mixed with the smell of sweet rolls from the hotel coffee shop. When the women’s movement arrived, it gave me permission to think what I really wanted and I went to Paris to study theater – most exciting year --living alone in Paris, performing with the Bread and Puppet Theater when they came to town, and with Robert Wilson’s group.

Back in Boston my wonderful friend and classmate Betty Boulware died suddenly of Marfan’s disease and I thought if people are going to disappear like this, I’d better make some new ones— our son Benjamin born 1973. Taught theater freelance, and on the faculty of Boston University School of the Arts, and made ‘theater pieces’ as we called them, with masks and movement and text – not really plays but something between dance, a pageant, documentary, and poem. When my daughter Sarah was born 1979, I composed an autobiographical ‘piece’ called BABY STEPS with baby movements and interviews with my family, developed with Lee Breuer and Ruth Maleczech in New York and performed in Boston at MOBIUS, in NYC at a now defunct off –broadway house, and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, 1985, with my 12 year old Ben running the sound. That was a blast! Since the play was about the puzzle of family and work, (how to do both without fragmentation and collapse) it was terrific that Ben was part of it.

In the ‘80’s and ‘90’s there was still money around for theater festivals and projects – I worked with Theater Company of Boston and the Women in Theatre Festival- and then suddenly money ran out. Went to graduate school in playwriting thinking I better get a Masters to ride through the financial crunches. Got a gig writing an educational play about teen dating violence – The Yellow Dress – it has now played to half a million high school students around the country. Formed a production company to do more educational pieces, imagining that they would make money too – then 9/11 came and money and people’s interest in theater in schools evaporated. Poof!

Hooked on exploring the issue of women and violence from the research I did writing The Yellow Dress, in 2002 I went to India to talk to people about girls being trafficked for sex and wrote a play based on two stories I heard there. In 2004, I discovered the same stories in the U.S. and wrote the sequel, BODY AND SOLD, which has now toured around the country to 30 cities produced by women’s groups, colleges, and theaters to raise awareness about this epidemic = the kidnapping of runaway American kids for sex rings.

Over the past four years, my mother has become increasingly fragile and I have been doing more to do to take care of her. I am working on a play now which I hope will show something about how if feels to lose our memory – how a person with dementia might think. It’s not as gloomy a play as you might think – actually kind of funny the way Beckett is funny.

I’ve been lazy about creating a website, but anyone who wants to see the plays I have in the computer I’d be glad to send them to you. I'm thinking more about theater in the back yard, like the events I used to stage in the neighborhood when we were kids, making shows with Connie Whitman and Sarah Kosting - 2 years ahead of us at Staples. Theater that sprouts up in public places.

Over past 15 years I’ve been studying Wu style Tai Chi and Chi Gung -- a wonderful practice and a life-saver.

A hodge-podge of a life, really, with ups and downs too complex to narrate here. But always interesting and challenging, increasingly more fun, with a wonderful family at the center. And I hope more and more a life outdoors.

I am really looking forward to seeing everyone and hearing the 50 years of tales from other corners of the map.