At a rehearsal of Free Association Theater Ensemble's play "Oh Baby!" several cast members made a point of introducing themselves to the playwright, Debbie Barrett, who was watching from just offstage.

Barrett was all but speechless.

"They all came up to me and told me they were so grateful that I was allowing them to do this," she said. "I had to pinch myself. I thought, 'The joke's on you! You're treating this thing I wrote like a real play!'"

Barrett has a hard time thinking of herself and the word "playwright" in the same sentence. She's a clinical social worker and associate professor in the UNC School of Social Work, at least by day.

But no matter what you do with the rest of your time, if you write plays, you're a playwright. And for someone who has only been at it for two years, Barrett has put together a string of successes.

Her first play was a finalist for a popular festival of short plays at The ArtsCenter in Carrboro. Her second made it to the stage at another ArtsCenter festival - and won.

And now her first feature-length play is being produced by FATE, a Cary company.

So, even if Barrett feels like something of an impostor, FATE founder/director Julya Mirro has news for her: She's not just a playwright - she's a really good one.

"It's a brilliant idea for a 90-minute play," Mirro said of "Oh Baby!" - eight short interlocking vignettes dealing with aspects of fertility and childbearing. "I hope people will walk away from it talking about the ideas it raises.

"Debbie's stories are told in such a way that they make you think about your own story, and that's an amazing and difficult thing to do. I think she hit it out of the park."

Barrett's budding career grew, as many do, out of her love of watching the stage. She had a special fondness for The ArtsCenter's annual Ten by Ten festival, which presents 10 plays, each 10 minutes long or less.

"I've always loved that festival," Barrett said. "Two years ago I happened to see their call for submissions, and I thought, 'Hmm, if I were to write a play, what would I write about?'"

Her experiences as a social worker came to mind. She imagined an interaction between two women in the waiting room of a doctor's office: one is pregnant and wishes she wasn't, and the other is desperate to be a mother but is having a miscarriage.

"I thought about how something that is a gift for one person can be a tragedy for someone else," she said. "I thought about it for a while and sat down at the keyboard. An hour later I had a play."

She submitted "Inside Stories" to Ten by Ten. To Barrett's surprise, the play, one of hundreds of submissions, made it to the final round of selections. "I was blown away," she said. "I thought, 'Oh my god, I might be a part of Ten by Ten! ... But I might not... But I might!' I finally decided that if I don't get in, I'll just keep writing."

Which is exactly what happened. That play didn't make it onstage. Her next one did.

"Conception," a humorous exchange between a husband and wife about how best to go about conceiving the perfect baby, was accepted into the 2009 Play Slam, in which the audience picks the winner. And it won.

Mirro was there. "I liked the conversational tone of it," she said of Barrett's award winner. "Not a lot of scripts really sound the way people talk. They're written to be read. Debbie's sounded very honest, very real. I suggested she could write a full-length play."

Barrett did that - sort of. Writing a full-length play was a daunting prospect, so she broke the job into smaller parts. The result was eight related acts, or playlets - including "Inside Stories" and "Conception" - woven to form a whole. They all deal with issues of fertility and parenting.

"I didn't really set out to write about fertility," said Barrett, who has two children. "But my first two plays happened to be about that, and in a way those characters just took me there. When you become a parent, or are considering becoming a parent, it's such a pivotal moment. There's so much hope, so much apprehension, so many powerful emotions."

Mirro said "Oh Baby!" hits a lot of those. "It's amazing how this play has touched all of us in the ensemble in different ways, relative to our own experiences," she said.

For Barrett, watching "Oh Baby!" come to life has been extraordinary. "I can't tell you how exciting this is for me," she said. "This is my baby."