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 each 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 aegis of professional directors, theatertheaterEdelGrau performed his first two plays, Sentimental Breakdown... and Dialog. 
 

Back to Britain - the 'early' plays and acting

Encouraged by these first 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, 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: QED, Sisters, All the World and Exit. 

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 joined the post-grad acting course at The Drama Studio London. 

Following this, Sebastian 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.

Life is a cabaret - Kissing the Goldfish and going solo

By the mid-nineties, Sebastian, together with actress Charlotte Bicknell, had also 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 seen at the Komedia in Brighton and at the Drill Hall London as part of the English Chanson season in early 2003.  In a rare reunion appearance, Sebastian once more joins forces with Charlie Bicknell as special guest on her aptly titled Night of the Goldfish show at the legendary Pizza on the Park venue in February 2009.  

First Brush with Recognition - the Love Trilogy

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 agent Rod Hall 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 now forms part one of The Love Trilogy.  The second play, Love Hurts, was developed in close collaboration with Arcola Theatre, 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 taken a step away from theatre Sebastian wrote his next three plays in quick succession: Top Story, in which two young men await the end of the world while watching TV received its first exposure as a rehearsed reading at the ICA London in May 2008, and by June the next year casting was underway for Elder Latimer is in Love, where a Mormon missionary falls in love with a young Muslim woman who is determined to go all the way for her faith.  The play opened at Arcola Theatre on 7th September 2009 and ran there for an original four weeks to rapt audience and critical response.

Sebastian's latest play Baur au Lac, set at the famous hotel of the same name on lake Zürich unites two sisters in their sixties who attend one of their son's weddings and whose lives are brought into a whole new light by events far away from their oasis of peace.  A rehearsed reading is now planned for Spring 2010, with a view to production early 2011.
 

Sebastian has written a novel, Angel, which was published in January 2009 and is now available in hardback and paperback editions from online retailers worldwide; he wrote the libretto and lyrics for Monstersound (music by David Klein, Olivier Truan and Nicky Reiss, shortlisted for the Musical of the Year Competition Copenhagen, 1994), and the libretto for the musical Alvaro's Balcony in collaboration with Mercury Workshop Award winner Jonathan Kaldor, which received a rehearsed reading with a cast led by Susannah York at Her Majesty's Theatre in November 2007 and a first studio production one year later at the Landor Theatre.

Since 2007 Sebastian has become increasingly interested in video as an experimental art form and he continues to explore this as part of his work in crossover and new media, using not only video on its own but also in combination with dance, music and language.  His first commissioned project in this vein, Now & Then, was shown as a multi-media performance at Werkstattkultur Münchenstein near Basel in Switzerland in June 2009 and by coincidence his next one will also be seen in Basel, at the Vorstadttheater in February 2010, as part of an inter-generational encounter in song and memories, called Gibeligääli.   

Between 1999 and 2008, Sebastian also worked extensively as a freelance writer, director and 'content consutlant' on large scale multi-media events, exhibitions, brand installations and dynamic training experiences in places as varied as London, Berlin, Amsterdam, New York, Hong Kong, New Orleans, Puerto Rico and Beijing.

In Progress - The [Power] Book

Since January 2009, Sebastian has been working closely with Ludger Hovestadt, Professor for Computer Assisted Architectural Design (CAAD) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich) and Vera Bühlmann, who heads the Laboratory for Applied Virtuality there, on The [Power] Book, which forms part of their Abundance Initiative and calls for a radical new digital energy culture and is currently earmarked for publication towards end 2010.