We present a framework of sequential action control (SAC) for stabilization of systems of partial differential equations which can be posed as abstract semilinear control problems in Hilbert spaces. We follow a late-lumping approach and show that the control action can be explicitly obtained from variational principles using adjoint information. Moreover, we analyse the closed-loop system obtained from the SAC feedback for the linear problem with quadratic stage costs. We apply this theory to a prototypical example of an unstable heat equation and provide numerical results as the verification and demonstration of the framework.