Sam Sejavka
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Born in Melbourne in 1960, Sam Sejavka is a writer, actor and musician. He has spent much of his working life singing and composing music, rising to some prominence during the mid-eighties in the band Beargarden. From the 1990s, he has concentrated on his work as an actor and playwright.
During the '80s a film Dogs In Space used episodes from his life as its basis. The main character, Sam (played by Michael Hutchence), was named after Sejavka; Sejavka appears briefly in the party scene, being addressed by Hutchence as "Michael".
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[edit] Bands
In the late 1970s, Sejavka fronted Melbourne post-punk band The Ears.
In the mid-1980s, he formed Beargarden, who were signed to Virgin Records Australia and had a minor hit with their single "The Finer Things" and the album All That Fall.
[edit] Plays and acting
Sejavka's plays include:
- Planetarium
- Restoring the Picture of Dorian Gray
- Advice from a Caterpillar
- The Hive (winner of the Victorian Premier's Louis Esson Prize for Drama in 1990), adapted in 2006 by Chamber Made into a music-theatre work
- In Angel Gear (winner of the Victorian Green Room Awards Best Production)
- Mammothrept (produced while he was playwright-in-residence at La Mama Theatre, Melbourne).
In 1995, his play All Flesh is Glass took him to New York as part of an exchange programme organised by New Dramatists and the Australian National Playwright's Centre.
[edit] Writing
Sejavka has also published many short prose works. His screenplay for the hour-length film Earthbound was the first film script to be shortlisted for the Louis Esson Drama prize. From time to time, he works as a theatre director.
His play Mysterium, commissioned by Kickhouse theatre, won the 1999 Wal Cherry Award. In mid 2000 he played Oscar Wilde in Barry Dickens' Believe me Oscar Wilde at La Mama directed by Lynne Ellis.
His most recent productions are The Lord of Misrule, Sruti Smriti and Mysterium.
Recently, he adapted Jacob Rosenberg's long form poem Shylock for the stage. This work centres around a production of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice set in a Jewish ghetto in Nazi-occupied Poland. Currently, he is working on two new plays: Ambergris - set on an island off the coast of Queensland, dealing with beauty and greed, and As Above So Below - a play about the occult practices of the poet W. B. Yeats. He is also spending time parenting his daughter Polly, and collecting 19th century horror and fantasy novels.
