Live Arts Theater’s 2024-2025 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, the production is presented by Bernie Murphy & Patricia Simpson and sponsored by the City of Charlottesville Office of Social Equity.
“Marys Seacole” will have 12 performances in the Gibson Theater, Friday, Feb. 14 to March 2, 2025, at Live Arts Theater.
Live Arts will host two special events: an opening night reception following the performance on February 14, and a post-show audience talk-back on Thursday, February 27, 2025 with a 7:30 p.m. 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,” said Sara Holdren of New York Magazine.
Based on the real-life Mary Seacole, a 19th century Jamaican nurse, adventurer and entrepreneur, Drury’s play 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.
New York Times referred to the production as “… breathless and radiant … a dazzling hall of mirrors.”
“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,” Straughn said.
“Marys Seacole” premiered in 2019 at LCT3 at Lincoln Center in 2019, and was subsequently 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 presents the Virginia premiere of “Marys Seacole.”
Drury is a critically acclaimed Brooklyn-based playwright whose works include “Marys Seacole,” which won an Obie Award, and “Fairview,” which earned a 2019 Pulitzer Prize. Drury is a graduate of Brown’s MFA playwriting program.
Founded in 1990, Live Arts celebrates the forging of 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.
Tickets are $28 per adult and $25 per student and senior citizen, and are available through the box office at [email protected], by phone at 434-977-4177 x123, or online.
Live Arts Theater is at 123 E. Water Street, Charlottesville.
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Rebecca Barnabi
