*I Still Hear the Bells and The King’s Shilling: music and lyrics co-written with Fiona Bevan
*Promises: lyrics co-written with Heidi James
SEA CABINET
MUSIC AND LYRICS BY GWYNETH HERBERT
BOOK BY HEIDI JAMES*
"Truly a perfect 75 minutes of music-theater."
COMING MAY 2024
Sea Cabinet is a song cycle of linked songs about memory, obsession, love and the sea. A woman walks the beach alone, obsessively collecting every discarded and washed-up object she finds. She takes them home to catalogue each one with the care and rigor of a scientist. Each item sings with the memory of a secret sea-set story. Written and originally performed in England, our 2019 production was the U.S. premiere of the work. We are thrilled to return to this much-loved work!
This 75-minute song cycle is performed in one-act with no intermission.
CAST & CREATIVE
Performer, composer / lyricist and musical activist Gwyneth Herbert has been hailed as one the most imaginative and idiosyncratic artists of her generation. Gwyn has collaborated with artists, orchestras, brass bands, kids, pole dancers and puppets to produce a huge canon of work that challenges expectations and seeks to find dialogue with the world. Her seventh solo album, Letters I Haven’t Written, was accompanied by a UK tour that explored the struggle for connection through film, storytelling and song. As a key part of the project, Gwyn held Letters workshops with different groups from each community, who then joined her onstage – listening, learning and making together. She’s the co-creator of six musicals, including Bristol Old Vic’s record-breaking production of A Christmas Carol with Tom Morris and Lee Lyford. She has also received major commissions from the London Sinfonietta, Mahogany Opera, Snape Maltings, and conducted her own film score at the BFI.
Heidi James is the author of critically acclaimed novels Wounding, So the Doves (a Sunday Times Crime Book of the Month) and The Sound Mirror. She won The Saboteur Award for her novella, The Mesmerist’s Daughter, and was a finalist in The Cinnamon Poetry Collection Prize. Her short stories, poetry and essays have been published in various anthologies and magazines including, among others, We’ll Never Have Paris, Somesuch, Dazed and Confused and Galley Beggar Press. She hosts a podcast, First Graft, where she discusses writing and procrastination with other writers. Her collaboration with Gwyneth Herbert, The Sea Cabinet, attracted outstanding reviews from The Guardian, Vogue and The FT, among others. She has an MA in Creative Writing and a PhD in English Literature and is the 2015 recipient of the Dr. Rajini Pani Outstanding Faculty Award.
