Seret Scott

Seret Scott is an American actress, director, and playwright, best known for her roles in the films Losing Ground and Pretty Baby, as well as guest appearances on the televisions shows The Equalizer, Miami Vice, and Cosby. She is also known for her theatrical roles on Broadway and the many plays she has directed on national and regional stages.[2][3]

Seret Scott
Born
Seret Scott

(1949-09-01) September 1, 1949
Washington, District of Columbia, U.S.
NationalityAmerican
Alma materNew York University
Occupation
  • Actor
  • director
  • playwright
Years active1970–present
Spouse(s)
Amos A. Williams
​
(m. 1976)​
[1]

Seret Scott directed The Old Settler by John Henry Redwood at The Studio Theatre in Washington, DC in 1997

Early life

Scott was born on September 1, 1949, in Washington D.C. She has referred to herself as “a child of the 60's,” as her youth in D.C. was marked by segregation and civil rights turmoil.[4] She began her career as an actress in 1969 when she left New York University, where she was studying, to join the Free Southern Theater, a community theater group allied with the civil rights movement that sought to introduce free, socially incisive theater for African Americans in the South.[5]

Career

Stage

When she returned to New York City, Scott continued to participate in activist theatre, including anti-Vietnam performances and performances for inmates at Rikers and Sing Sing prisons.[5] She also began her off-Broadway career, appearing in the 1970 play Slave Ship at Theatre-in-the-Church in New York City.[6] In 1974, Scott appeared on Broadway as Sue Belle in Ray Aranha’s play My Sister, My Sister, for which she received a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance.[7]

Following her Broadway success, Scott went on to work as an actress for decades in New York City and around the country, including another appearance on Broadway in Ntozake Shange's 1976 play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf.

In 1989, Scott made her directorial debut with Some Sweet Day, written by Nancy Fales Garrett, which was reviewed favorably in the New York Times.[8] After this success, Scott transitioned full time into a career as a director and has directed scores of plays off-Broadway and in regional theater productions, including at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and Chicago’s Court Theatre.[9]

Film

Scott’s first screen role was as “Flora” in Pretty Baby, a 1978 drama directed by Louis Malle, starring Brooke Shields, Keith Carradine, and Susan Sarandon.[10]

Scott’s most seminal role was as “Sara,” a professor of French Philosophy navigating complicated relationships with her artist husband, her work, and other artists in the 1982 film Losing Ground, written and directed by Kathleen Collins.[11][12] The film was one of the first feature films ever directed by an African American woman. Although it won First Prize at the Figueroa International Film Festival in Portugal, “Losing Ground” did not receive widespread attention until its rediscovery decades later.[13][14]

In 2015, New York Times film critic A.O. Scott called Losing Ground “a puzzle and a marvel,” and wrote that it “casts a highly individual spell.”[13] In 2019, New Yorker film critic Richard Brody wrote that the film “reveals Collins to be one of the most accomplished and original filmmakers of her time.”[15] Scott’s role in the film followed her starring role in another of Collins’ productions, the play “The Brothers” at the American Place Theater in New York City in April of 1982.[16]

Scott went on to appear in various television series throughout the 1980s and 1990s, including Miami Vice and Cosby while continuing her career as a stage actress, director and playwright.

Filmography

Theatre actress
Year Title Role Theater
1970 Slave Ship, LeRoi Jones playwright Noliwe[17] Theatre-in-the-Church, New York City
1974 My Sister, My Sister, Ray Aranha playwright Sue Belle[18] Little Theatre, New York City
1976 For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf, Ntozake Shange playwright Understudy Booth Theatre, New York City
1981 Weep Not for Me, Gus Edwards playwright Crissie Adams[19] Theater Four, New York City
1981 Meetings, Mustapha Matura playwright Elsa[20] Marymount Manhattan, New York City
1982 Brothers, Kathleen Collins playwright Caroline Edwards[21] American Place Theatre, New York City
1983 Puppetplay, Pearl Cleage playwright Woman One[22] Theater Four, New York City
1985 Eyes of the American, Samm-Art Williams playwright Roberta Ottley/Velda[23] Theater Four, New York City
1988 A Burning Beach, Eduardo Machado playwright Maria[24] American Place Theatre, New York City
1996 The Alexander Plays...Suzanne in Stages , Adrienne Kennedy playwright unnamed character[25] Joseph Papp Public Theater/ Susan Stein Shiva Theater, New York City

Films and television actress
Year Title Role Notes
1978 Pretty Baby Flora
1982 Losing Ground Sara Rogers[26] Written and directed by Kathleen Collins. Also starred Bill Gunn, Duane Jones.
1987 Miami Vice (TV series) Esther Nevin
1988 The Equalizer (TV series) Elena Rodriguez
1991 The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd (TV series) Louise
1991 Mathnet (TV series) Prosecutor
1991 Murder in Mind (TV series) Sarah Bendix
1993 Tribeca (TV series) Plain-clothed Cop
2000 Cosby (TV series) untitled role

Playwright
Year Title Theater
2008 Second Line[27] ATLAS – Lab Theatre II, Washington, D.C.

Theatre director
Year Title Theater
1989 Some Sweet Day[8] Long Wharf Theater, New York City
1994 Zooman and the Sign[28] McGinn-Cazale Theatre, New York City
1999 Mujeres Y Hombres New Victory Theatre, New York City
2005 Birdie Blue[29] Second Stage Theatre, New York City
2005 Starving[30] Woolly Mammoth, Washington, D.C.
2005 The Piano Lesson Arena Stage, Washington, D.C.
2006 Yohen[31] West End Theatre, New York City
2011 Richard III[32] Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Ashland, Oregon
2013 A Raisin in the Sun The Don and Ann Brown Theatre, West Palm Beach, Florida
2014 Native Son (World Premiere) Court Theatre, Chicago, Illinois
2015 Autumn (World Premiere) Crossroads Theatre, New Brunswick, New Jersey
2019 For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf Court Theatre, Chicago, Illinois

References
  1. "Ancestry.com. New York, NY, Marriage License Indexes, 1907-2018, Borough: Manhattan, License Number 3677". www.ancestry.com. Retrieved 18 July 2020.
  2. Hill, Anthony D. (2018). Historical Dictionary of African American Theater. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 474. ISBN 978-1-5381-1729-3. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
  3. Hill, Anthony D.; Barnett, Douglas Q. (2009). The A to Z of African American Theater. Scarecrow Press. p. 436. ISBN 978-0-8108-7061-1. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
  4. Baranauckas, Carla (1 October 2006). "From Onstage to Offstage". The New York Times. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
  5. Hattier, Caroline. ""Leaders and Pioneers of Black Threatre in the Post Modern Era" Log In ‹ Black Theater in D.C. — WordPress". journeys.dartmouth.edu. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
  6. "Seret Scott". www.iobdb.com. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
  7. "My Sister, My Sister – Broadway Play – Original | IBDB". www.ibdb.com. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
  8. Gussow, Mel; Times, Special To the New York (27 March 1989). "Review/Theater; At a Family Reunion, the Elusiveness of Kinship". The New York Times. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
  9. "Seret Scott". Court Theatre. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
  10. Klotman, Phyllis Rauch; Gibson, Gloria J. (1997). Frame by Frame II: A Filmography of the African American Image, 1978-1994. Indiana University Press. p. 379. ISBN 978-0-253-21120-0. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
  11. Beaulieu, Elizabeth Ann (2006). Writing African American Women. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 204. ISBN 978-0-313-02462-7. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
  12. Klotman, Phyllis Rauch (1991). Screenplays of the African American Experience. Indiana University Press. p. 123. ISBN 978-0-253-20633-6. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
  13. Scott, A. O. (5 February 2015). "Peeling Back the Layers of Black Indie Film". The New York Times. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
  14. Hoberman, J. (15 April 2016). "'Losing Ground' Meditates on Art as It Examines a Marriage in Peril". The New York Times. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
  15. Brody, Richard. "Kathleen Collins's "Notes from a Black Woman's Diary" Contains an Extraordinary Unmade Movie". The New Yorker. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
  16. Rich, Frank (6 April 1982). "Theater: Black Anguish in 'Brothers'". The New York Times. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
  17. "Slave Ship". www.iobdb.com. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
  18. Hischak, Thomas S. (2001). American Theatre: A Chronicle of Comedy and Drama, 1969-2000. Oxford University Press. p. 74. ISBN 978-0-19-535255-9. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
  19. Rich, Frank (9 February 1981). "Stage: 'Weep Not for Me: Inside the South Bronx". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
  20. Gussow, Mel (31 March 1981). "Stage: Mustapha Matura's 'Meetings'". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
  21. Rich, Frank (6 April 1982). "Theater: Black Anguish in 'Brothers'". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
  22. "Puppetplay". Lortel Archives. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
  23. Gussow, Mel (29 October 1985). "Stage: 'Eyes of American'". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
  24. Guernsey, Otis L.; Sweet, Jeffrey (1989). The Best Plays of 1988-1989. Hal Leonard Corporation. p. 445. ISBN 978-1-55783-057-9. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
  25. "The Alexander Plays...Suzanne in Stages". Lortel Archives. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
  26. "Story of Equal Rights". Daily News at Newspapers.com: 112. 24 Jan 1983. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
  27. "We Love Theatre: Second Line at the Atlas". We Love DC. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
  28. Brantley, Ben (12 December 1994). "THEATER REVIEW; On Both Sides of Urban Violence: Dehumanized and Interchangeable". The New York Times. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
  29. Hernandez, Ernio (2005). "Cheryl L. West's Birdie Blue With 'Law & Order' Star Opens Off-Broadway, June 23". Playbill. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
  30. Jones, Kenneth (2005). "Starving, a Portrait of Black Atlanta in the '50s, Premieres at D.C.'s Woolly Mammoth". Playbill. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
  31. Gates, Anita (5 November 2006). "A Kiln Test for a 30-Year Interracial Marriage". The New York Times. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
  32. "The African Company Presents Richard III (2011, Oregon Shakespeare Festival) :: Shakespeare in Performance :: Internet Shakespeare Editions". internetshakespeare.uvic.ca. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
  • Seret Scott at IMDb
  • Theatre History Episode # 32 (podcast), Seret Scott Looks Back on the Free Southern Theater, 22 May 2017[1]
  1. "Seret Scott". HowlRound Theatre Commons. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
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