Katherine DeBoor is the author of one of the winning plays, Matchheads

Katherine DeBoor is a graduate of Northern Kentucky University with a BFA in Playwriting (‘23). There she acted in productions, premiered original work and participated in campus leadership and empowerment groups and retreats. Her original play Come Back to Earth was premiered in the Henry Konstantinow Theater. When she is not writing plays, she is pursuing a career in screen/television writing and stand-up comedy. She finds much of her artistic inspiration through her perspective on society and politics and their impact on the individual and on self-improvement. Apart from Come Back to Earth, her work includes Night Owls and Sitting… She is based out of Cincinnati, OH and Miami, FL. Katherine will receive a two-week residency at the Academy for Performing Arts in Prague.

This year’s prompt was based on the Vanek Trilogy and a quote from the principal essay by Vaclav Havel, The Power of the Powerless:

Yet even in [totalitarian] societies, individuals and groups of people exist who do not abandon politics as a vocation and who, in one way or another, strive to think independently, to express themselves and in some cases even organize politically, because that is a part of their attempt to live within the truth.

Katherine’s play describes a future society where books have been banned by the government and scholars and rebels were executed. The most essential step of governing is absolute compliance from all people.

As Havel wrote:

They must live within a lie. It is enough for them to have accepted their life with and in it. Individuals confirm the system, make the system, are the system.

Can memories and hope be rebuilt? Can one individual shake the society and bring change?

You can read Katherine DeBoor’s winning play Matchheads here.