Sara Holdren is a director and writer originally from Charlottesville, Virginia, as well as the Artistic Director of Shakespeare Academy @ Stratford and the Artistic Director/co-founder of the theater company Tiltyard. From 2017-2019 she served as the theater critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com. She gravitates towards Shakespeare, Russian theater, reimagined classics, literary adaptation, and spectacular, outsized stories with a sense of humor and an element of the otherworldly to them.
Recent projects include Twelfth Night at Two River Theater; The Merchant of Venice at Cleveland Play House; The Winter’s Tale for Shakespeare Academy @ Stratford; Macbeth and The Comedy of Errors with Two River Theater’s A Little Shakespeare program; MIDSUMMER (an original reinterpretation/riff which she co-adapted from the plays of William Shakespeare) with Tiltyard; Deer and the Lovers by Emily Zemba; The Zero Scenario by Ryan Campbell; and The Master and Margarita, adapted by Edward Kemp from the novel by Mikhail Bulgakov. Sara also served as the Artistic Director of the 2015 Yale Summer Cabaret, where she directed the original production of MIDSUMMER and Sarah Ruhl’s adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. She holds a BA in Theater from Yale University and an MFA in Directing from Yale School of Drama. She is also a Drama League Fellow, a graduate of the Acting Shakespeare program at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and the recipient of the 2016-2017 George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism.
Sara is also a teacher with an abiding interest in making theater with students from middle school to graduate school and beyond (her recent teaching includes semesters at Primary Stages and the graduate acting program at the New School). In her work, she combines a lifelong love of classical texts with an interest in ensemble training and devised theater, striving for a rigorous and dynamic use of language, fused with passionate, physical storytelling, vibrant visual worlds, and a spirit of joy, collaboration, and play.