Biography of Sebastian Michael

Sebastian was found in a wicker basket at Basel airport on a mild summer night in the mid nineteen-sixties, having arrived on a plane from Manchester UK where he had been born barely six weeks earlier. Fortunately, he was taken home by a kindly lady (as it turned out, his mother), and visitors to Switzerland will notice that this happy event is still celebrated every year on the 1st of August, with jolly brass bands and elaborate firework displays. . . Following an uneventful childhood, Sebastian spent his teenage years experimenting with writing, before enrolling at Basel University, where he largely managed to avoid being drawn into any lectures or seminars, and instead used his time to great effect with the university's English language drama group and a theatre company he co-founded: under the guidance of professional directors, theatertheaterEdelGrau performed his first two plays, Sentimental Breakdown. . . and Dialog. Encouraged by these early forays, Sebastian abandoned his university studies and returned to England to pursue a career in the theatre, this time settling in London, his favourite place in the world, which is where he's been living ever since. By the late Eighties, Sebastian had founded a new theatre company, Aesthetics on Stage, with which he produced four of his plays on the London and Edinburgh fringe, and in 1991, after simultaneously completing a part-time degree in Social Sciences, a part-time acting course at the City Lit, and doing a full-time job with a frontline drugs agency in Soho, Sebastian finally joined the post-grad acting course at The Drama Studio London in Ealing. Sebastian then spent the rest of the Nineties working mainly as a writer and actor. Together with theatre director Michael Cabot, Sebastian set up the production company Michael & Michael which among others brought the British premiere of Dea Loher's award-winning play Tattoo to London in their own translation. By the mid-nineties, Sebastian, together with actress Charlotte Bicknell, set up Kissing the Goldfish, the music comedy act which attained near cult status with appearances at three Edinburgh Festivals, two Glastonburys and other festivals and performances in Asia, Australia and Europe. A break in the performance schedule for 'Goldfish' in 1998 led to Sebastian developing his own solo show Agreeably Mad which he performed at several London venues and at the Edinburgh Pleasance in 2000. Parts of this show were also shown at the Komedia in Brighton and at the Drill Hall London as part of the English Chanson season in early 2003. In 1998, Sebastian's play The Power of Love was shortlisted for the coveted Verity Bargate new writing award. The play was then disqualified from the competition because a highly acclaimed production at The Southwark Playhouse opened before an announcement of the winner had been made and so rendered it ineligible as an 'unperformed' play. The piece nevertheless ushered in a significant development for Sebastian, as it persuaded top London literary agents Rod Hall and Clare Barker of the Rod Hall Agency to represent him as a writer. Furthermore, US publisher Smith & Kraus selected no fewer than five excerpts from the play for their 1999 editions of Best Men's Monologues and Best Women's Monologues. The Power of Love is part one of The Love Trilogy. The second play, Love Hurts, was developed in close collaboration with the Arcola Theatre (winner of the 2001 'Open Space Award' and dubbed the 'new Almeida') where it received workshops and a rehearsed public reading. Time After Time is the third and final play in the series and was completed in the Summer of 2004. It reached the 'final ten' of that year's Verity Bargate Award at the Soho Theatre. Having previously written a couple of full-length on-spec screenplays, Sebastian wrote and directed his first short film Twenty-Six Takes on Life Without Allen in 2004. With Charlotte Bicknell and Matt Emery in the leading roles and Miles Conder as Director of Photography, this 30-minute drama was produced under the 'label' of Sebastian's new production company OptimistCreations and has since been screened at festivals in Chicago, LA, Lisbon and Padua. This was followed in 2006 by a second short film, The Study of Bunkers & Mounds in a Temperate Climate (Relatively Speaking) which at that year's TCM Classic Shorts Competition was "highly commended". Since then, Sebastian has written a new full-length script, Soho, Night 9X9, which is now in development and set to become his first feature-length film. Other work includes the novel Angel, libretto and lyrics for Monstersound (music by David Klein, Olivier Truan and Nicky Reiss, shortlisted for the Musical of the Year Competition 1994 in Copenhagen), and the libretto for the musical Alvaro's Balcony in collaboration with Mercury Workshop Award winner Jonathan Kaldor.