Elizabeth Swados, Creator of Socially Conscious Musicals, Is Dead at 64

Elizabeth Swados, a composer, writer and director who fashioned a unique style of socially engaged musical theater, drawing on a global menu of musical styles and a street-level engagement with the politics of the dispossessed, died on Tuesday in Manhattan. She was 64.  The cause was complications of surgery for esophageal cancer that she had undergone in April, her wife, Roz Lichter, said.  Ms. Swados (pronounced SWAY-dose) was already a talent to watch when, while still a student at Bennington College, she provided the music for Andrei Serban’s adaptation of “Medea” at La MaMa, the downtown Manhattan avant-garde theater.  more