Wayhaven Productions
About Us
meet Neil and Lee:
A pair of lovers in their seventies, divorced and apart for two years and then re-married, about to celebrate their 48th anniversary, have completed their first feature film, Final Gifts, telling the story of two courageous women, from different cultures, women who struggled against oppression. Strangers to each other, they meet after death, and in the communion with one another they are able for the first time to speak of their loves and losses and begin their healing.
Lee Selden, a deeply involved elder in their local church, works intermittently as a chaplain at RWJ Hospital in New Brunswick and as a volunteer in a hospice; husband Neil, whose first produced play was Someone’s Comin’ Hungry Off-Broadway, starring Cleavon Little and Blythe Danner, works with couples and families as a psychotherapist in a group practice that was the first in NJ to work with gays as real people with real issues, not as diagnoses in the DSM.
Neil and Lee helped create and direct Encounter, Inc., the first successful East Coast day program for young drug abusers and their families, a grassroots program in Greenwich Village in 1965. They later became trainers and teachers for the NYC Addiction Services Agency and also taught human relationship workshops and meditation, after spending many months studying existentialism in India. They currently lead occasional human relations workshops in an exciting civil-rights-oriented church that they attend, a church that recently built housing for homeless young women who are aging out of the foster care system.
Their son, an experienced Zen practitioner, manages a team of ninety software Internet infrastructure experts. His wife, an artist and long-distance runner, teaches challenged children in a Quaker school in PA. They have two daughters making the Seldens delighted grandparents.
As editor and literary advisor, Lee has been a major contributor to all of Neil’s novels, plays and screenplays. Neil’s play SOMEONE’S COMIN’ HUNGRY, written in collaboration with McCrea Imbrie, first appeared Off-Broadway in 1969, was revived most recently at the New 42nd Street Theatre in Manhattan. His other plays and a musical drama have appeared variously at the Berlin Festival, the Actor’s Studio, the Roundabout Theatre, the American Conservatory Theatre, the Greenwich Street Theatre, and the American Theatre of Actors.
A film of Neil’s book THE GREAT LAKESIDE HIGH EXPERIMENT appeared on national television. Five of his young adult novels have been published. Neil’s work for the theatre has been recognized by the Audrey Wood Best Play Award and the Jean Dalrymple Best Play award.
Lee’s work, and her loving urge for perfection, are daily recognized, applauded and bowed down to by her grateful spouse.
A pair of lovers in their seventies, divorced and apart for two years and then re-married, about to celebrate their 48th anniversary, have completed their first feature film, Final Gifts, telling the story of two courageous women, from different cultures, women who struggled against oppression. Strangers to each other, they meet after death, and in the communion with one another they are able for the first time to speak of their loves and losses and begin their healing.
Lee Selden, a deeply involved elder in their local church, works intermittently as a chaplain at RWJ Hospital in New Brunswick and as a volunteer in a hospice; husband Neil, whose first produced play was Someone’s Comin’ Hungry Off-Broadway, starring Cleavon Little and Blythe Danner, works with couples and families as a psychotherapist in a group practice that was the first in NJ to work with gays as real people with real issues, not as diagnoses in the DSM.
Neil and Lee helped create and direct Encounter, Inc., the first successful East Coast day program for young drug abusers and their families, a grassroots program in Greenwich Village in 1965. They later became trainers and teachers for the NYC Addiction Services Agency and also taught human relationship workshops and meditation, after spending many months studying existentialism in India. They currently lead occasional human relations workshops in an exciting civil-rights-oriented church that they attend, a church that recently built housing for homeless young women who are aging out of the foster care system.
Their son, an experienced Zen practitioner, manages a team of ninety software Internet infrastructure experts. His wife, an artist and long-distance runner, teaches challenged children in a Quaker school in PA. They have two daughters making the Seldens delighted grandparents.
As editor and literary advisor, Lee has been a major contributor to all of Neil’s novels, plays and screenplays. Neil’s play SOMEONE’S COMIN’ HUNGRY, written in collaboration with McCrea Imbrie, first appeared Off-Broadway in 1969, was revived most recently at the New 42nd Street Theatre in Manhattan. His other plays and a musical drama have appeared variously at the Berlin Festival, the Actor’s Studio, the Roundabout Theatre, the American Conservatory Theatre, the Greenwich Street Theatre, and the American Theatre of Actors.
A film of Neil’s book THE GREAT LAKESIDE HIGH EXPERIMENT appeared on national television. Five of his young adult novels have been published. Neil’s work for the theatre has been recognized by the Audrey Wood Best Play Award and the Jean Dalrymple Best Play award.
Lee’s work, and her loving urge for perfection, are daily recognized, applauded and bowed down to by her grateful spouse.
For a wonderful article about us and 'Final Gifts', published
in the newspaper US 1, log onto:
http://www.princetoninfo.com/index.php?option=com_us1more&Itemid=6&key=06-03-2009%20NJ%20Filmfest