Sequoia Sellinger

About me:

Sequoia Sellinger is a composer, educator, and collaborative theater artist based in New York City.  She aims to create work that is accessible, relatable, funny, and reimagines the possibilities of what the world could be. She challenges traditional storytelling expectations by writing through a feminist and anti-racist lens. Her work in community-building echoes in her work as an artist and educator because she believes collaboration is practice for living and allows us to create the world we want to live in (and sing in) together. Sequoia holds an MFA in Musical Theatre Writing from NYU Tisch (ASCAP Max Dreyfus Award & Schubert Scholarship), as well as a Bachelors of Music in Composition from Purchase Conservatory of Music. She also studied composition at Nadia Boulanger’s Conservatoire in Paris. She was a composer in the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop as well as New Dramatists Composer-Librettist Studio. She is a proud member of both the Dramatists Guild and Maestra. Original musicals include: “Next Year in Connecticut!” (Joe’s Pub, 54 Below, Sold Out Green Room 42 Show, NYU Tisch, AMTP Semi-finalist), “Earth First!” (Macdowell Fellowship, College of the Atlantic, Dartmouth), “Silent Springs” (BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop), and “Impossible Green” (The York Theatre, Musical Theatre Factory), “Gravity of Me Gone” (Ars Nova ANT Fest). Her micro-opera “It’s Noon, Do You Know Where Your House Plants Are?” was premiered by American Opera Projects this past May 2024.

About my musicals:

NEXT YEAR IN CONNECTICUT!, with book and lyrics by Sarah Rossman, is an original musical that  follows the Stableman family and their guests (both invited and not) over the course of one long Passover Seder. The show features mental illness musical chairs, a dog shiva, and hey this might even be the year that Elijah (the prophet) actually shows up! The music is character driven, witty, with unexpected melodies and rhythms, with influences ranging from Fiona Apple to Leonard Bernstein. 

EARTH FIRST! (EF!), with book and lyrics by Donna Oblongata, the radical environmental movement, has been at the forefront of direct action to save the planet since 1981. EF! made famous, dramatic, non-violent tactics such as tree-sits, road blockades, and activists chaining themselves to bulldozers. Over the past 40 years, the movement has grown, evolved, and splintered. Some members have “aged out”,  while some  served lengthy prison sentences for “eco-terrorism.” Many former members  became leaders in larger fights for social and environmental justice. EF! (a new musical) brings this movement’s culture, history and present to the stage through an immersive, sung-through musical. Audience members find themselves acting as participants at the “Round River Rendezvous,”the movement’s annual gathering. As always, the gathering will end with a mass action such as a blockade or sit-in and everyone is asked to prepare themselves. The ensemble-based play includes new twists on classic musical tropes. A queer love triangle unfolds between two of the tree-climbing instructors and a prison abolitionist. Microorganisms that break down human excrement get a bombastic kick-line moment. A “primitive skills” practitioner tangos while teaching us all about how to brush your teeth with a stick. Earth First! the musical has been developed at the Macdowell Arts Colony. 

SILENT SPRINGS, with book and lyrics by Laura Barati, is set in present-day, small-town USA. The show follows Nadia, Bella, and Mary, three students at Silent Springs High who discover that they are all sexual assault survivors whose rapes have been dismissed, ignored, or covered up by their community and local law enforcement. After the justice system fails them, they decide to take justice into their own hands. In the vein of Little Shop of Horrors meets Sweeney Todd (or Crazy Ex-Girlfriend hooks up with Kill Bill), Silent Springs is a darkly comedic, original, feminist revenge-fantasy musical. Silent Springs has been developed at the BMI Lehman-Engel Musical Theater Workshop.

IMPOSSIBLE GREEN, with book and lyrics by Claire-Frances Sullivan, is an environmentalist, anti-capitalist, science-fiction original story that takes place on a future earth where people are forced to live in factories producing their own atmosphere to survive. The bottom (working-class) floor is thrown into turmoil when the protagonist, Birdy, finds a leaf in a world where there are no longer trees…or are there? This leaf should not exist. A story of class, revolution, and sacrifice, Impossible Green asks us to dream bigger and taller than we ever have. Impossible Green had a workshop in January of 2021 with the York Theatre in New York City.