Sarah Mayhew
Directing
As a director, I aim to highlight the voices and stories of women and the LGBTQ+ community. Storytelling devices that warm me include magical realism, nonlinear narrative structures, and the joke within the crisis. I seek to create pieces that challenge, captivate, and leave the audience with more questions than answers. In the rehearsal room, I cultivate an environment of curiosity and serious play for my actors, designers, and artistic collaborators. I am a firm believer that strong relationships are the backbone for any production, and I make a conscious effort to ensure that my plays are joyous spaces for creation.
Witch
By Jen Silverman
Do you have hope that things can get better? Witch is a play that fights, bleeds, kills, and dies to ask this question without ever finding the answer. The story begs us to step into a world that slashes society into clear ingroups and outgroups. The wealthy and the impoverished. The men and the women. The nice, normal folks and the witches. The great irony of it all is that there is no witch in this play, and yet at the same time, everyone on the stage is a witch. The characters we meet from the sleepy town of Edmonton are all fueled by nothing less than desperation. Perhaps for power. Perhaps for love. Perhaps just for a seat at the table. No matter what these characters fight for, we feel the weight of judgement upon their every move. This production seeks to embody this nameless, censorious presence through an abstraction of a courtroom. The gathered assembly preside over the events with utter impassivity. From this silent chorus, we understand that judgement was passed long before the trial began, and all that remains is the sentencing.
Also, this play is a comedy.
Treasure Island
By Mary Zimmerman
There are some stories we come back to again and again in pursuit of how we felt when we first experienced them. Treasure Island is one of those timeless tales that we bequeath to our children, generation after generation. Whether we grew up on the 1950 film with Robert Newton, the Muppet adaptation, or the animated Treasure Planet, this story lives in our cultural memory. Treasure Island is about growing up along with Jim as he teeters on the knife’s edge between adolescence and adulthood. All of us can relate to his journey in our own way, whether we are children looking up to his bravery, or adults looking back at the uncertainty of youth. Whatever our relationship to Jim and his adventure, this production seeks to put the nostalgia of Treasure Island in conversation with the story itself, and to explore how the act of telling stories becomes its own quest for communion.
The Three Little Kittens
By Jean Prescott Pearce
A Sick Day for Amos McGee
By Nicole B. Adkins
The Secretaries
By The Five Lesbian Brothers (Lisa Kron, Maureen Angelos, Dominique Dibbell, Peg Healey, Babs Davy)
Patty Johnson has just risen to the hallowed rank of secretary at Cooney Lumber Mill: the world’s largest supplier of fine pine. Though she craves the attention and approval of her new female coworkers, it’s clear that something is off in this office: a militant diet culture, a secret language of clicks and giggles, a written vow of celibacy. To Patty’s horror, these little quirks are just the tip of the iceberg, if the iceberg is a cult of women who ritually murder lumberjacks in the woods once a month. In this spooky and satirical investigation of internalized misogyny, Patty is faced with a choice: will she run from these horrors, or will she embrace this bloodthirsty family of women and earn her hunting jacket?
Tracks
By John Patrick Bray
Siblings Jennie and Simian have a problem. Their favorite spot by the Hudson River is about to be closed off by AmTrain, which is planning a bullet train from NYC to Albany closing off access to the water for residents east of the Hudson. Lucky for them, Dapper Dan, the straight-edged kid in their group, will do anything for Jennie – anything. As they plan, anthropomorphic manifestations appear around them – the Headless Horseman who must now wear an old IBM computer monitor on his shoulders; Johnny Appleseed, who fills a candy machine near the tracks with Apple Jim Jims; the Voice of The Boy That Died; etc.; - however, these manifestations remain unseen until tragedy strikes, as the misfits attempt to disrupt an oncoming train by any means necessary. I co-directed this workshop reading with Edward Alan Winner and collaborated with the playwright for The Wallace Theatre's Page to Stage series in 2023.
in a word
By Lauren Yee
Yee's in a word dives into the fragmented world of a mother grieving the loss of her son, who vanished one day from right under her nose. The narrative of this play weaves the present--the first anniversary of the disappearance--and the past, which we discover is not quite as idyllic as Fiona wants it to be. We see several versions of reality converge and distort, inviting the audience to piece together what really happened on the day Tristan vanished. I assistant directed this play under Sarah Lehmann in Fall of 2021.
The Snake Eater
By Bradley Hewlett
A new work by MFA playwright Bradley Hewlett, The Snake Eater tells the story of a young man named Thomas who is part of a religious community that handles venomous snakes. As he approaches his coming-of-age ceremony where must handle a snake of his own, Thomas experiences intense doubt, confusion, and fear. These ideas manifest in his dreams, told through dance, in the form of a cult of snake worshippers that are trying to send him a message. The world premiere of The Snake Eater was produced as part of the Texas Tech University School of Theatre & Dance's Frontier Festival: a celebration of new works by Tech students.
Photo by Kelsey Blotter
Photo by Kelsey Blotter
Photo by Kelsey Blotter
Photo by Kelsey Blotter
"She's Just Like Me"
By Julia Anderson
A new work by MFA playwright Julia Anderson. “She’s Just Like Me” follows the events of a particularly strange afternoon in Kevin’s garage when his girlfriend, Kelly, storms in with the intention of setting fire to his beloved truck. Her plans hit a bit of a snag when she discovers that the truck—Kimberly—is sentient and not too fond of the idea of being burned alive. In just ten minutes, this play explores self-defeat, liberation, and what it means to be a possession through an unlikely friendship between a woman and a vehicle. Performed as part of the 2022 Graduate Center Arts & Humanities Conference 10-Minute Play Competition.
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)
By Adam Long, Daniel Singer, and Jess Winfield
Complete Works is a high-paced physical comedy wherein three guys who know just about Shakespeare to be dangerous race through the entire canon of the Bard's plays in under two hours. I directed this piece as part of Birmingham-Southern College's mainstage season in Fall of 2019 as my senior capstone project.
Photo by Stewart Edmonds
Photo by Stewart Edmonds
Photo by Hope Royers
Photo by Stewart Edmonds
Split
By Michael Weller
Michael Weller’s Split follows Paul and Carol on the evening of a catastrophic dinner party. As they prepare salads and side dishes, we peer into a quirky and volatile marriage that verges on collapse moments before their guests arrive. One notable element of this play is that of fierce uncertainty. As these two characters bounce between emotional extremes, the audience is never quite sure what lies around the next corner: messy divorce or tender reconciliation. I directed this play in Spring of 2018 as the final project for my Directing class as part of a student-directed festival.
