Christian Benjamin Seaborn

Christian was born a month premature on Christmas Eve of 1956 into a most unusual (and dangerous) family. His father and his father's identical twin both had been born with a rare and bizarre form of epilepsy with lethal consequences. Psychomotor epilepsy would cause his father and uncle to go on violent tirades for no reason, with no provocation, whatsoever.

Christian estimates that at least half of his and his older brother's childhoods were spent "living" in hiding from their father's violent persona in hotels and motels all over their hometown of Portland, Oregon.

When Christian was nine years old, he discovered, quite by accident, the theater when he was asked if he wanted to play a small role in the Portland Opera Association's production of LaBoheme. Because his brother (whom, when they were boys, he idolized) was already appearing in the opera, Christian eagerly accepted.

This opened up to him a completely new way of living that was separate from the fear he knew at home. If Christian was in a play production it meant, through both the rehearsal process and the actual performances, he had a mental and physical escape from his dangerous home life. It was not a permanent solution, but the next best thing for a terrified little boy.

For several months at a time, for many nights during the week, the dwarf boy did not have to be at home where it was like walking on eggshells around his father for fear of setting off a psychomotor seizure and the violence that went with it. If he were not actually cast in some show, he would volunteer to do props, lighting or stage-manage. Anything connected to the theater was far better than being at home.

What he did not realize, at least not until he was fourteen years old, was that he was building a career. Taking on actual acting roles as well as anything else, he was learning the trade of working in the theater from an early age.

By the time he graduated from high school he had appeared in, directed, stage managed, been the lighting designer, been the props manager on productions and taught acting classes. Between the ages of ten and eighteen, he had built a resume of just under twenty-five live theater productions, working both in Portland and in Andover, Massachusetts.

At the age of eighteen, he already had a career to pursue and pursue it vigorously he did.

Moving to southern California at the ag...