Sarah Connolly is a NYC-based theater director with a mission to facilitate creative environments rooted in generosity. She believes that a strong production grows out of a healthy team where every person feels a deep sense of responsibility to one another. A graduate of Wesleyan University in 2019 with Honors in Comparative Politics and Civic Engagement, she uses her academic background to help her tell stories that are in conversation with the moment through which we are living. Her work is often rooted in exploring complex situations and characters that exist outside of the good versus evil binary. She seeks to empower audiences to ask new questions, rather than provide them with easy answers.

In March 2024, Connolly directed and produced a production of Evan Brodsky’s The Glass Between Stars at The Tank. Other recent projects include Romeo and Juliet (Boomerang Theatre Company), Landis and the Bear (Samuel French Annual Short Play Festival) and Mouse Trap (New York Theatre Festival), as well as readings of Running After Bobby (Ensemble Studio Theatre), Wrought (Self-Produced), and The Two Hander (Project Y Theatre). At Wesleyan, her 2018 production of Legally Blonde: The Musical received the J.P. Adler Memorial Award for Student Theatre. This fall, she will direct a workshop production of The Betrothed by Scarlett McCarthy at The Tank. She frequently directs for Living Radio, a monthly short play series that presents work based on current news stories. In June 2024, she was appointed to the Board of Directors for The Facing Project, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit focused on bringing communities together through storytelling and live performance.

In September 2019, Connolly began training as an actor in The Actor’s Gym Studio, in order to develop her ability to understand and communicate with actors. After a year and a half of acting training, she began assisting the studio director, David Perlow, with noting and staging actors and eventually began directing her own scenes. In 2022, alongside Perlow, she co-founded The Mandala Series, a program designed to turn remarkably strong scene work in the studio into full productions, which she ran through the end of 2023. In addition to her directing work, Connolly has served as a producer, stage manager, props assistant, production manager, box office manager, carpenter, and Covid Compliance Officer on various NYC productions. While her passion lies in directing, she believes that her experiences on all different sides of the production process make her a more well-rounded leader with a deep understanding of the value of every individual involved in bringing a production to life.