Sarah Shapiro (she/her) is an NYC based director who aims to make theater that lives at the intersection of performance and ritual. In her work she strives to actively cultivate and create a heightened sense of community in a larger attempt to shift the theatrical landscape away from purely commercial entertainment that audiences are meant to consume towards an experience meant to be shared together. 

Sarah most recently directed the sold out production of  Leave if No Response, a “Jewish, Queer coming-of-age,” at The Tank in NYC. Her recent work as an assistant director includes In Corpo (dir. Jess Chayes) at Theater Row, The City Theater’s Annual Showing of Titanic, 1997 (dir. Dante Green) at Vino Theater, multiple workshops at Mercury Store with Dante Green, and Maiden Voyage (dir. Alex Keegan) at the Flea Theater. When not directing, Sarah is a producing assistant at Daryl Roth Productions. 

She holds a BA from Wesleyan University where she received high honors for her direction of Anne Carson’s Antigonick and thesis “From Commodity to Communitas: Imagining American Theater as Secular Ritual” and was the 2023 recipient of the Theater Department’s Outreach and Community Service Award. 

This ethos primarily manifests not only in the specific stories she chooses to tell, but in the structure of the performance and how the play or theatrical piece interacts and engages with its audience. Her work is fueled by the belief that in order for theater to live up to its true potential it must function in a ritualistic, secularly religious way that integrates the audience. This engenders a feeling of communitas as well as an experience of change. Now more than ever theater that creates and fosters true community is necessary and healing. 

Furthermore, her experience has taught her that you cannot create community amongst audiences unless there is a strong foundation of community within the company. Thus, respect, connection, collaboration, joy and play are fundamental aspects of her directorial process.