Sandra Seaton
East Lansing, MI
Playwriting
Sandra Seaton is a librettist and playwright. Her libretto for the solo opera From the Diary of Sally Hemings, set to music by composer William Bolcom and commissioned by mezzo soprano Florence Quivar, has been performed at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center and a number of other venues. A CD, with soprano Alyson Cambridge and pianist Lydia Brown, is available on White Pine. A Glimmerglass Glimpse video of the solo opera with Cambridge, featuring projection designs by S. Katy Tucker, can be viewed on the Glimmerglass Opera website.
In January,2020, the opera Night Trip, about a young woman’s life-changing journey to the South to visit her relatives, music by Carlos Simon and libretto by Sandra Seaton, premiered at Washington National Opera’s American Opera Initiative. A review in the Washington Post singled out “Seaton’s candid, vernacular text” for “gradually revealing dramatic and poetic substance.”
Among her fourteen plays, The Bridge Party, Seaton’s first play, portrays a group of Black women who fight to maintain their dignity and sense of self in the face of racism. Seaton’s other works include The Will, a drama about a Black family during Reconstruction, her Civil Rights era play Music History or a Play about Greeks and SNCC in 1963, a riff on college life and African-American student activists, Call Me By My Name, a performance piece about Henrietta Lacks, Sally, a one-woman drama, in which an aged Sally Hemings recalls her life with Jefferson, the spoken word piece, King: A Reflection on the Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with spirituals sung by tenor George Shirley, and Chicago Trilogy: A Chance Meeting, The Lookout, and Black for Dinner, three one-act plays featuring Dr. Shirley.
In 2020, The First Bluebird in the Morning, with Carlos Simon, about a prisoner about to be paroled, premiered with LA Opera. In 2021 her play with music, The Passion of Mary Cardwell Dawson, starring acclaimed mezzo soprano Denyce Graves, with original music by Simon, premiered at the Glimmerglass Festival. In 2022 her ploratorio, Dreamland: Tulsa 1921, with composer Marques L.A. Garrett, premiered with Dallas’s Turtle Creek Chorale and traveled to Carnegie Hall in July 2022 and was nominated for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize.
In August 2022, an expanded version of The Passion of Mary Cardwell Dawson with two new arias by Seaton and Simon premiered at Glimmerglass Festival. In September 2022, Seaton’s solo play Sally, starring Sabrina Sloan, was performed at the Aspen Theatre Festival.
In January 2023, the expanded version of The Passion of Mary Cardwell Dawson, starring Denyce Graves, was performed at the Kennedy Center by the Washington National Opera. In 2024, The Passion of Mary Cardwell Dawson will be performed at Opera Carolina and Pittsburgh Opera.
For additional information, please go to Sandra Seaton’s website: https://www.sandraseaton.com/