Elizabeth Swados

Elizabeth Swados (February 5, 1951 – January 5, 2016) was an American composer, writer, musician, choreographer, and theatre director born in Buffalo, New York. Her father, Robert O. Swados, was an attorney who played a role in establishing the National Hockey League's Buffalo Sabres alongside Seymour H. Knox III, and was a first cousin of the social critic and writer Harvey Swados. Her mother, an actress and poet, died by suicide in 1974. Her only sibling, an elder brother named Lincoln, had schizophrenia and died in 1989. Swados herself lived with depression, a subject she addressed in My Depression: A Picture Book, published by Seven Stories Press in 2014. She died on January 5, 2016, at age 64, from complications following surgery for esophageal cancer.

Swados earned a Bachelor of Arts in music and creative writing from Bennington College in Vermont in 1973. While there, professor Franz Marijnen introduced her to Ellen Stewart, which led to her involvement with Stewart's La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in New York City. Through La MaMa, she collaborated with directors Ellen Stewart, Andrei Serban, and Peter Brook, developing a theatrical language built on sound, rhythm, and movement. Her musical compositions for Fragments of a Greek Trilogy — comprising Medea, Electra, and Trojan Women — at La MaMa in the early 1970s, and for Peter Brook's Conference of the Birds later in the decade, established her as an innovator in both American and international theatre. Among her early La MaMa credits, she composed music for Serban's 1972 production of Medea, which also marked the acting debut of Diane Lane. Swados and Lane later collaborated again on Runaways.

Her first Broadway success, Runaways, originated as a community service piece intended for a limited engagement. After its run at The Public Theater, the show transferred to Broadway in May 1978. The production earned Swados Tony Award nominations for Best Book of a Musical and Best Choreography, as well as additional Tony nominations for Best Musical, Best Direction of a Musical, and Best Original Score. She also received Drama Desk Award nominations for Outstanding Director of a Musical, Outstanding Lyrics, and Outstanding Music, and won an Obie Award for her direction of the piece. Runaways was revived in July 2016 by New York City Center as part of its Encores! Off-Center season.

Swados's second Broadway production, Doonesbury, a musical comedy with lyrics by Garry Trudeau, opened at the Biltmore Theatre in November 1983. The following year, she again collaborated with Trudeau on Rap Master Ronnie, a satirical musical for which she composed the music. In 1985, her musical The Beautiful Lady, centered on six Russian poets who lived and worked in St. Petersburg during the Revolution, received the first Helen Hayes Award for Best New Play. In 2023, The Beautiful Lady was staged Off-Broadway at La MaMa's Ellen Stewart Theater, directed by Anne Bogart with adaptations to Swados's book by Jocelyn Clarke.

Beyond the stage, Swados composed music for the 1981 film Four Friends and the 1987 television production Seize the Day, and performed live at Carnegie Hall. She made guest appearances across eleven soap operas on ABC, NBC, and CBS daytime programming. In 1977, filmmaker Linda Feferman profiled her in the short documentary The Girl with the Incredible Feeling, a title drawn from a 1975 children's book Swados wrote and illustrated. The documentary incorporated performance footage, home movies, and an animated dramatization of the book narrated by actor Kenneth McMillan. Her animated short film adaptation of My Depression: A Picture Book, featuring voices by Sigourney Weaver and Steve Buscemi, was an official selection of the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival.

Swados published three novels, three works of nonfiction, and nine children's books. Her autobiography, The Four of Us: A Family Memoir, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 1991. Her final novel, Walking the Dog, was published posthumously in June 2016 by The Feminist Press. Among her many honors, she held a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Ford Fellowship, a Covenant Foundation Grant, an International PEN Citation, a Cine Award, and a Mira Award. In 1980, Hobart and William Smith Colleges awarded her an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters. She taught in the drama department at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and served as a visiting artist at The New School's Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts. Her writing appeared in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Vogue, and other publications. In 2020, Ghostlight Records released The Liz Swados Project, an album honoring her music featuring artists who followed in her tradition. Shortly after her death, actress Diane Lane established a grant for arts educators in her memory.