Live Arts Theater’s 2024/25 VOYAGES Season continues with the Virginia premiere of MARYS SEACOLE, Jackie Sibblies Drury’s time-travelling chronicle inspired by the real-life of Mary Seacole, directed by Aiyana Straughn. MARYS SEACOLE is presented by Bernie Murphy & Patricia Simpson and sponsored by the City of Charlottesville Office of Social Equity. MARYS SEACOLE has 12 performances in the Gibson Theater, February 14 through March 2, 2025, at Live Arts Theater, 123 E. Water Street, in Charlottesville. Tickets are $28 for adults and $25 for students and senior citizens and are available through the Box Office at boxoffice@livearts.org, by phone at 434-977-4177 x123, or online at livearts.org/tix.
Live Arts will host two special events for MARYS SEACOLE: opening night reception following the performance on Friday, February 14, 2025; and post-show audience talk-back on Thursday, February 27 (7:30pm curtain). Audiences are welcome to enjoy beverages and concessions one hour prior to the performance and at intermission.
“MARYS SEACOLE is in many ways an act of remembrance for the unremembered … an exhortation to see both past and present better.”
– Sara Holdren, New York Magazine
Based on the real-life Mary Seacole, 19th century Jamaican nurse, adventurer and entrepreneur, playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury’s MARYS SEACOLE sets sail on a fast-paced kaleidoscopic voyage across oceans, time-shifting through the centuries. We meet many Marys – a West Indian nanny watching her charge on a Manhattan playground, Mary at a nursing school practicing triage, and at a contemporary nursing home, Mary on the Crimean battlefield, and Mary everywhere and every-when else. MARYS SEACOLE is the tale of an extraordinary woman, chronicling the strength and empathy of women through the centuries paid to care.
“… breathless and radiant … a dazzling hall of mirrors … ”
– New York Times
Director Aiyana Straughn explains how the play personally resonates: “Drury tells this story from a transcendental space within the global Black woman experience. There are particular caregiving experiences that Black women across the diaspora encounter, and it is important to continue to shed light upon them and peer beyond the surface. For me, Drury’s interpretation of [Mary Seacole’s] story beckons us to rest, remember, and reimagine ourselves and what our world could be.”
Live Arts production of MARYS SEACOLE directed by Straughn features a stellar local cast: Christiana Mitchell as Mary; Haydn Haring as May; Madison Patterson as Miriam; Marty Moore as Merry; Cadessa Davis as Mamie; Simona Holloway as Duppy Mary; Allyson Grant (Miriam US); Miriam Halpern (Merry US); and Rory Adams (Mamie US).
MARYS SEACOLE’s skillful creative team includes: Maia Adolphs (Assistant Director); Becca Budrock assisted by Lita Flowers (Production Stage Managers); Will Slusher (Scenic Designer); Rowan Isaacson (Assistant to the Scenic Designer); Kyle Schneider (Lighting Designer); Vanessa Woodfolk (Associate Lighting Designer); Mix Rudolph (Lighting Design Apprentice); Zoe Dickerson (Sound Designer); Treatrous Jackson (Costume Designer); Liz Howard (Properties Designer); Christine Jacobs (Dialect Coach); Dalyla McGee (Dramaturg); and Daniel Kunkel (Fight Choreographer).
Performance History
MARYS SEACOLE received its premiere production at LCT3 at Lincoln Center in 2019, and has subsequently been produced by Mosaic Theater in Washington, D.C., The Donmar Warehouse (London), Griffin Theatre (Chicago); and the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale. Live Arts is presenting the Virginia premiere of MARYS SEACOLE.
About the Playwright
Jackie Sibblies Drury is a critically acclaimed Brooklyn-based playwright whose works include MARYS SEACOLE (Obie Award); Fairview (2019 Pulitzer Prize); Really; Social Creatures; and We Are Proud To Present A Presentation … (Edgerton New Play Award). Her plays have been presented by Lincoln Center Theater, Soho Rep., Berkeley Rep, The Magic Theatre, Victory Gardens, Trinity Rep, Woolly Mammoth, InterAct Theatre Company, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Mosaic Theater Company in DC, and The Bush Theatre in London, among others. Drury has developed her work at Sundance, the Bellagio Center, The Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep, Manhattan Theatre Club, Ars Nova, A.C.T., the Soho Rep. Writer/Director LAB, New York Theatre Workshop, and The MacDowell Colony, among others. Her awards and honors also include the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, a Jerome Fellowship at The Lark, a United States Artists Fellowship, a Helen Merrill Playwriting Award, and a Windham-Campbell Literary Prize in Drama. Drury is a graduate of Brown’s MFA playwriting program.
About the Director
Aiyana Straughn (she/her) is an Atlanta-based artist with over 20 years of experience promoting the authentic storytelling of Black lives. She is a writer, producer, and director of four original plays. Her latest piece, She Echoes on the Vine premiered at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center and her poem, Black Joy, Come debuted at the Charlottesville Black Arts Collective’s Blackity Black Black exhibit at McGuffey Arts Center. Previous acting credits include performances with the Charlottesville Players Guild, Live Arts, UVA Acts, and the Darden Business School. As the Director of Arts Partnerships for South Arts, Aiyana leads ArtsHERE and Cultural Sustainability, national equity-focused grantmaking programs that help to strengthen capacity and sustain well-being for arts organizations. Aiyana received her BA in Theatre & Communications from The Ohio State University and her MPA and Certificate in Nonprofit Management from Wright State University.
About Live Arts
Founded in 1990, Live Arts is celebrating more than 34 years of forging theater and community. Powered by more than 1,000 volunteers, Live Arts is a national model for engaged community theater, known for exceptionally high caliber productions, provocative programming and for supporting new works. Live Arts is guided by these organizational priorities: Artistic Integrity; Educational Excellence; Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion; and Volunteer & Community Engagement. As the anchor tenant in a four-story space, Live Arts proudly serves as a vital cultural resource in the heart of downtown Charlottesville with two state-of-the-art stages, rehearsal studio space, a library, and a rooftop event space.
The 2024/25 VOYAGES Season is made possible by:
The generous support of The REA Charitable Trust, C-VILLE Weekly, WTJU 91.1FM, Ting, PJ Networks Computer Services, the City of Charlottesville, Albemarle County, The Madwoman Project, and by hundreds of theater lovers. Live Arts is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Virginia Commission for the Arts, which receives support from the Virginia General Assembly and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.
Tickets are $28 for adults and $25 for students and senior citizens available through the Box Office at boxoffice@livearts.org, by phone at 434-977-4177 x123, or online at livearts.org/tix.
For More Information
Please contact Marketing & Communications Manager Madison Patterson by email at madison@livearts.org or phone at 540-447-4563, or visit livearts.org.
