Mistress, Common-law wife, or First Lady? Sally Hemings, the sister of Jefferson’s deceased wife Martha, demands that Jefferson, whose days are numbered, must keep his promise to free their children. In the solo play SALLY the stakes are high. Does Jefferson’s will soothe the grief, the memories held by blood kin, or does it revive old wounds and become a battleground?

This full-length play brings to life the aspirations and values of African American college students from the South Side and West Side of Chicago. Set at the University of Illinois in 1963, Seaton’s characters variously go through sorority and fraternity initiations, cope with Northern segregation, and join the civil rights struggle in the South.

A performance to remember. A choir of over 100 voices, actors and orchestra, Garrett’s brilliant, resounding hymns and Seaton’s gripping text with its powerful dramatic interludes will transport you to this historic time that has been out of our public psyche for far too long.

The First Bluebird in the Morning is composer Carlos Simon’s newly-commissioned setting of verses by Sandra Seaton—sobering, heartfelt and moving.

On a July evening in 1958, Wesley and Mack, Black WW II veterans, arrive at their sister’s apartment in Chicago to pick up their niece. Conchetta has been waiting all summer to see her relatives—her grandmother, her aunts, her “play aunts.” The 16 year old’s vision of small town life in Tennessee stands in sharp contrast to the world of steel and concrete she is about to leave.

The Bridge Party portrays the strength of a group of black women who gather for their weekly bridge game as they cope with a house-to-house search of the black community in the wake of a lynching. The setting of The Bridge Party is the meeting of an African American women’s bridge club in the South of the 1940’s.