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Elizabeth Swados
Elizabeth Swados

Elizabeth Swados

Elizabeth Swados (1951-2016) composed, wrote and directed over 30 theater pieces, including The Trilogy, The Red Sneaks, Nightclub Cantata, Runaways, Alice in Concert, Doonesbury, Rap Master Ronnie, The Haggadah, Jewish Girlz, Jonah, Job, Esther, Jerusalem (with Yehudah Amichai), The 49 Years and Missionaries. Her work has been performed at The Flea Theater, La MaMa, The Public Theater, Manhattan Theatre Club, The Brooklyn Academy of Music, Carnegie Hall, on Broadway, Off-Broadway, at regional theaters throughout the United States, and at locations all over the world. She also published novels, non-fiction books, children's books and poetry.

Recent productions have included Atonement, a theatrical oratorio presented by the Cathedral of St. John the Divine; her own adaptation of S. Ansky's The Dybbuk at NYU/Tisch; Spider Operas at PS122 (with Mabou Mines) and Political Subversities, a political revue presented in two Culture Project festivals and at Joe's Pub. My Depression: A Picture Book, was published in April 2005, and her theater textbook, At Play: Teaching Teenagers Theater, was published by Faber & Faber in June 2006.

Ms. Swados recorded a children's CD, Everyone is Different, in conjunction with Forward Face in March 2007. Her other work on new musicals included Kaspar Hauser, Piano Bar and an evening of Roald Dahl poetry set to music. She was a faculty member at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. Her awards include Five Tony nominations, three Obie Awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Ford Grant, a Lila Acheson Wallace Grant, a PEN Citation and others. The Liz Swados Project, a recording of musical selections from over 30 years of her career, was released in 2020 and is available from Ghostlight Records.

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