songmaker / playwriter / gamewright
Hi, I'm Devan Wardrop-Saxton (she/her)! I'm an interdisciplinary writer and musician making stories in the woods just outside Portland, OR.
My work is rooted in the American folk traditions I grew up in: songs transmuted through generations of singers; ghost stories that tell us more about the storyteller than the ghost; the vibrant necessity of simultaneous, contradictory accounts. I'm often exploring the inexorable frictions of intergenerational memory, the intimate complexities of determining identity by ourselves v. in relationship with our communities, and what true reconciliation asks of us. I'm inspired by emotions in our lives that aren't easily untangled, relationships whose importance to us is so much larger than what cultural norms expect, and by the transformative potential of play. I love language, especially when it fails, and am always trying to pin down the miracle that is a moment of being fully, truly seen.
Selected past work includes writing full-length play with songs You My Love At Home Again, one-act One Without the Other, a national semi-finalist for the John Cauble Short Play Award, composing the original score for Anon it Moves' The Winter's Tale, co-devising for the Drammy-award nominated ... And the Great Refraction!, collaborating with writer/performer Ames Miyako on their solo piece Metaxu, and releasing my debut EP of original music, The City Where You Live, in 2015. In summer 2022 my poems "soup song" and "I I I wish" were published by the lickety~split, and since 2022 I've also designed & published tabletop role-playing games on itch.io as dk makes, including GM-less, storytelling-focused games hold(ing) dear, OBLIVION, The Hallow Council, and more.
I'm a proud associate artist of new works lab String House Theatre, and am grateful to have received artist residencies with D'Clinic Studios (Zalaegerszeg, Hungary), Shaking the Tree Theatre (Portland, OR), and Sou'wester Arts (Seaview, WA). I'm a graduate of Arts for Learning Northwest's Teaching Artist Studio, have been on the teaching staff at California Coast Music Camp, Northwest Women's Music Celebration, and Northwest Writers' Weekend, and am a current member of the Puget Sound Guitar Workshop board of directors. B.A., Theatre & German Studies with a Distinction in Dramaturgy from Lewis & Clark College.
+ the latest: listen to my audio landscape from EROSION / BURIAL / UPLIFT / REPEAT - Waters of the Otherworld, an installation by interdisciplinary artist Kaye Blankenship!
+ drop me a line at devankws@gmail.com!
+ join my mailing list at dkmakes.substack.com!
+ listen to my music on Bandcamp!
+ check out my CV (.pdf)!