Sandra Seaton Biography

Sandra Seaton

Photo of Sandra Seaton

Sandra Seaton is a playwright and librettist. Her plays have been performed in cities throughout the country, including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Cleveland, Ann Arbor and East Lansing. Seaton has explored the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings in a number of works. The first was her libretto for the song cycle From the Diary of Sally Hemings, a collaboration with Pulitzer Prize-winning composer William Bolcom, who set Seaton's text to music. The work, for voice and piano, recreates the thoughts and feelings of Sally Hemings throughout her long relationship with Thomas Jefferson by means of fictional diary entries. Seaton’s text presents Sally Hemings as a complex individual who refused to be defined only as Jefferson’s mistress. From The Diary of Sally Hemings, sung by mezzo-soprano Florence Quivar, premiered at the Coolidge Auditorium of the Library of Congress on March 16, 2001. From The Diary of Sally Hemings was commissioned by Music Accord, Inc., a national consortium of presenters including The Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood, The Library of Congress in Washington D.C., San Francisco Performances, The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York, the Fortas Chamber Music Series at the Kennedy Center, The Ravinia Festival of Highland Park, Illinois, The Krannert Center at the University of Illinois in Urbana, and the University Musical Society, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. The work was praised by the Washington Post for its “subtle, penetrating power.” Seaton is indebted to the internationally acclaimed mezzo soprano Florence Quivar whose vision was the genesis of this work. In 2008 the brilliant young soprano Alyson Cambridge sang From The Diary of Sally Hemings at Oberlin Conservatory and Harkness Chapel at Case Western Reserve University. In Seaton's one-woman drama, Sally, an aged Sally Hemings recalls her life with Jefferson, reliving and re-evaluating the dilemmas she has faced and the choices she has made. Sally premiered at the New York State Writers Institute in 2003 with Zabryna Guevara as Sally Hemings. Sally was performed in February 2008 at the University of Colorado Denver and at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York with Mizan Nunes as Sally. Seaton’s most recent play, A Bed Made in Heaven, which further explores the relationship between Jefferson and Sally Hemings, premiered at Central Michigan University in 2007.

In May 2008 her play The Will was produced in Idlewild, Michigan as part of a weekend event she organized that included a symposium on the connections between African American culture and classical music, youth workshops, and recitals. Classical musicians and vocalists from Michigan high schools attended the play, participated in the workshops and gave recitals. Seaton organized the program, entitled “The Will at Idlewild: Classical Connections to African American Culture,” to serve several purposes: to teach a new generation about the historical significance of Idlewild, a refuge and cultural center during the era of segregation, to encourage the renewal of Idlewild as a center for the arts in the twenty-first century, and to dramatize the diversity of the African American experience with special reference to classical music. Seaton’s play The Will offers both an interpretation of the significance of Reconstruction for African Americans and an interpretation of African American culture that brings out the place of classical music in African American history and life. The play includes a character based on the life of Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield, known as “The Black Swan,” who became one of the most famous opera signers of her time, though she was born a slave. In organizing this “Idlewild Weekend” Seaton went far beyond her usual role as a playwright, acting as fundraiser, producer and overall supervisor, but the event’s focus on expanding and deepening awareness of the African American experience is the same goal that informs all her plays and other writings.

In August 2008 her play The Bridge Party, winner of the Theodore Ward Prize for African American Playwrights, was performed for the American Bridge Association under the direction of Aaron Todd Douglas. The Bridge Party has been anthologized in Strange Fruit: Plays on Lynching by American Women (1998) edited by Judy Stephens and Kathy Perkins. The play portrays a group of Southern black women who gather for a weekly bridge game against a background of lynching and house-to-house searches. William Bolcom's piano rags provided musical background for The Bridge Party at Michigan State University in a 2000 production. A review in The State News described The Bridge Party as a "careful look at women's wisdom and strength that dissects racial prejudice and its impact on everyday life." Ruby Dee appeared in a 1998 production of The Bridge Party directed by Glenda Dickerson at the University of Michigan with a cast that included Adilah Barnes, Michele Shay, Kim Staunton and Lynda Gravatt.

Sandra’s play Martha Stewart Slept Here was staged in 2008 at the Renegade Theatre Festival in Lansing. Her spoken word piece, King: A Reflection on the Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., premiered at the Black History Month Concert at the Wharton Center in East Lansing, Michigan in January 2005. Her works in progress include a trilogy of plays about African-American students at a Midwestern university during the Civil Rights movement entitled Room and Board, Do You Like Philip Roth? and Reservations.

In May 2009, her one-act play A Chance Meeting featuring George Shirley will be performed in Ann Arbor at the Arthur Miller Theater as part of the Ann Arbor Book Festival.

As a Professor of English at Central Michigan University in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, Sandra Seaton taught courses in playwriting, fiction writing, and African American Literature. Her scholarly work about African American communities in the South from colonial times through the era of segregation has been microfilmed by the Tennessee State Archives. Sandra Cecelia Seaton was born in Columbia, Tennessee. The stories of her grandmother, Emma Louish Evans, and her mother, Hattye Harris, remain an important influence on her writing. Grandma Emma also instilled in her granddaughter great pride in the work of their relative Flournoy Miller, who wrote the book and starred in Shuffle Along, a musical that many believe inaugurated the Harlem Renaissance. She received her BA from the University of Illinois, where she studied with John Frederick Nims, George Scouffas, and Webster Smalley. At Michigan State University, where she earned her MA in Creative Writing, she studied with Robert A. Martin. Seaton has been awarded residencies at Hedgebrook, Ragdale, and Yaddo artists colonies.

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