Deaf since the age of 7, Jenny Sealey has been the Artistic Director of Graeae since 1997. Since then, she has pioneered a new theatrical language and aesthetics of artistic access experimenting with bilingual British Sign Language (BSL) and English, pre-recorded BSL, creative captioning, and in ear/live audio description methods.
Credits for Graeae include: Self-Raising (in association with Soho Theatre and Theatr Iolo. Developed with The Incubator at The Egg, Theatre Royal Bath.), The Paradis Files an opera (commissioned by The Stables for IF: Milton Keynes, in partnership with BBC Concert Orchestra and Curve Theatre); Reasons To Be Cheerful a musical (2010 co-produced with New Wolsey and Theatre Royal Stratford East); Sarah Kane’s Blasted (in association with RADA); Kaite O’Reilly’s peeling, The House of Bernarda Alba (co-produced with Manchester Royal Exchange); Blood Wedding (co-produced with Dundee Rep and Derby Theatre); ‘The Threepenny Opera’ (co -directed with Peter Rowe, co-produced with New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich, Nottingham and Leeds Playhouses and Birmingham Rep). Plays for young people include Diary of an Action Man and Whiter than Snow both by Mike Kenny. Outdoor productions include Against the Tide, The Iron Man, The Garden, The Limbless Knight – A Tale of Rights Reignited and for the WW1 Centenary This Is Not For You with disabled veterans.
Radio adaptations for Radio 4, co-produced by Naked Productions and Graeae, include The Midwich Cuckoos, Amy Dorritt and Three Sisters Rewired (co-written with Polly Thomas).
Jenny has directed productions, run workshops and given presentations internationally in Japan, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Brazil, Russia and across Europe.
Jenny co-directed the London 2012 Paralympics Opening Ceremony alongside Bradley Hemmings (GDIF).
In 2022 Jenny was made an OBE. She has been awarded the Liberty Human Rights Arts Award and is an honorary Doctor of Drama at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and Middlesex University and a Fellow of the Central School of Speech and Drama and Rose Bruford College.