Sarah Lacy Hamilton (she/her) is a director, educator, and intimacy choreographer focused on new plays with great heart that hold the comic and the tragic in the same breath. Based in Sewanee, TN, she is especially interested in creating theatre for, with, and about rural communities in the American Southeast.
Sarah has directed and developed plays at Alabama Shakespeare Festival; The Farm Theater (NYC); the Prague Quadrennial; SpaceCraft, First Take Co., and River & Rail Theatre Co. (Knoxville); Barking Legs Theater (Chattanooga); Upstart Productions, WaterTower Theater’s Out of the Loop Festival, and Frank’s Place at the Kalita Humphreys Theatre (Dallas); the South Carolina New Play Festival (Greenville); Healthy Oyster Collective (Iowa City); and Richmond Triangle Players’ So.Queer Festival. Her work has also been seen at Sewanee | The University of the South, Wesleyan University, the University of Iowa, Southern Methodist University, and the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts & Humanities.
Highlights of Sarah’s work on new plays include: the premiere production of Tony-nominated actress Enid Graham’s How to Save Ourselves, the live and filmed performance of Chris McCreary’s solo show Hot Nostalgia, the Dallas regional premieres of Ruby Rae Spiegel’s Dry Land and Carrie and Francine, development of multi-media clown performance Media Clown at the 2019 Prague Quadrennial,and development of C. Meaker’s Gifts from God (O’Neill National Playwrights Conference Semifinalist).
Sarah co-founded House Party Theatre, an award-winning Dallas company dedicated to producing site-specific performances, increasing access for first-time theatre goers, and developing new work by Dallas playwrights. With HPT, Sarah directed and produced over twenty-five plays between 2015 - 2017. Her woman-led production of Julius Caesar with HPT was a TheaterJones Critic’s Pick.
As an intimacy choreographer, Sarah is certified by Theatrical Intimacy Education (TIE). IC credits include: Pass Over and Unusual Tale (River & Rail Theatre Co.); Great Comet, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Big Love (Sewanee); and Macbeth and Almost, Maine (SC Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities).
Sarah is an Assistant Professor of Theatre at Sewanee | The University of the South. She holds an MFA in Directing from the University of Iowa and a BFA in Theatre Studies with an emphasis in Directing from Southern Methodist University. Associate Member, SDC. Educator Advocate, TIE.
