Seyben is an award winning playwright with 20+ years of experience working as a theatre scholar and artist in Türkiye, Europe, and the US. She is currently teaching theater at the College of Southern Idaho. She previously served as the assistant professor of theater at Istanbul University, Istanbul University, and Bennington College. She holds a BA in Playwriting (Bennington College), an MA in Visual Communication Design (Istanbul Bilgi University), and a PhD in Theater Criticism and Dramaturgy (Istanbul University). Seyben has been training with National Michael Chekhov Association to be a certified NMCA teacher and director. 

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She published two monographs, Struggle and Survival under Authoritarianism in Turkey: Theatre under Threat (Lexington Books, 2020), and Theater and Multimedia (Habitus Kitap, 2016). Presenting an anti-colonial reading of Turkish theater, Struggle and Survival under Authoritarianism in Turkey, is one of the few books on Turkish theater in English and has been reviewed in Theater Survey. She co-edited two conference proceedings books on theatre education. She published papers on Turkish theater in the acclaimed, TDR, Third Text, and The International Journal of Cultural Policy.

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Seyben is a creative writer who won Spokane Civic Theatre's Playwrights' Forum Festival's Adjudicator Award with Intro to Greek Theater in June 2025. She also premiered her play The American Letter at The Ephemerates Theater's staged reading in 2023 and was selected for the Pitch-Your-Play-Session at the 2024 Mid-America Theater Conference. The play was produced by the College of Southern Idaho Theater Program in 2024. Seyben is currently working on three full-length plays: A Beauty Mark, Nor’easter, and Doctors, along with a collection of personal essays, which have appeared in publications like The RavensPerch, Door Is A Jar Literary Magazine, Synkroniciti, and the ManifestStation.

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Recent college directing credits include American Hero by Bess Wohl, Machinal by Sophie Treadwell, Fefu and Her Friends by María Irene Fornés, and Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn with music and lyrics by Roger Miller, and a book by William Hauptman. She also directed Jacyln Backhaus’ You on the Moors Now, Samuel D Hunter’s A Bright New Boise, Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit, Eugène Ionesco’s Rhinoceros in a new adaptation by Zinnie Harris as well as Sophocles’ Oedipus in a new version by Ellen McLaughlin at the College of Southern Idaho. Most of these plays were reviewed and recommended by the local news channel, KMVT, and the local paper, Times-News.

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On the administrative side, she served as the chair of Management of Performing Arts and Performing Arts at Istanbul Bilgi University. She is currently working as a board member of both Magic Valley Arts Council and JuMP Co. - Junior Musical Playhouse. Seyben has recently become a member-at-large of the Middle Eastern Theater Focus Group in ATHE that is committed to highlighting the scholarly and artistic output of Middle Eastern theater-makers and academics in the US and beyond.

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Seyben has recently published a book chapter entitled “Survival of the Weakest" in the volume, Exiled Scholars: Refugees or Intellectuals (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), and is working toward the publication of “Absence as Presence: Toward Multilingual Dramaturgy in Dream American and THE FRANCA RAME PROJECT” in another volume titled Theater of Resilience. The College of Southern Idaho staged her play, The American Letter, in Fall 2024. She is collaborating with a Spanish director to have A Beauty Mark produced in Barcelona. Seyben will be directing Helen Edmundson's stage adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's renowned novel, Anna Karenina, at the College of Southern Idaho 2025-26 Season.