Check Out Sarah Hunter’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Sarah Hunter.

Sarah, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
My story starts many decades ago back in Indiana, where I grew up. I started writing and performing my own little plays and episodes with my friends in Sayre Karlings’ back yard. We even built a stage and erected a “curtain” with bed sheets from her mother’s closet. I think we charged 25 cents per ticket to watch the performances. We were prolific–performed our staged dramas for an entire summer when we were 10 years old.

Writing and directing plays –years later in graduate school, the passion peaked. I discovered that actors loved acting more than anything else in their lives, and I ran with that. I began writing plays, monologues, sketches and short stories specifically for the actors in my world of theater. From there, I started performing indirecting, and producing my plays here in the Los Angeles area. I haven’t stopped!

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Are you kidding? “smooth road”? Finding the right actors and then finding the best small theater and then finding the MONEY to put on a play is a time-consuming, expensive process. Then you have actors who bail on you, egos, temperaments, personalties, the whole bag. But I wouldn’t trade a minute of it. I love everything about theater.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
You can read my musings on Substack under my name, Sarah Hunter, and you can FB me or Instagram messages me about my colleges and visual art. My plays are up at the ALAP Library reading series, and longer pieces can be seen through Fierce Backbone Productions as well as NEO Ensemble Productions. You can also catch me on YouTube in the series I co-created, acted in, and co-wrote as well as produced. The name of the YouTube series is “We’re Not Dead Yet.”

Are there any important lessons you’ve learned that you can share with us?
“Don’t take yourself so damned seriously.” If I approach theater with open arms and a loose embrace, it works. If I’m uptight and anxious, nothing works. It’s a creative process. You conceive the idea (your baby) and then you bring it to life (birth it) and then you find the actors (the family) and then it’s up and running, and then it’s over. The baby has grown up and left the house. Ending a run in the theater is like a small death for me. It will never come back with the same people and the same dynamics , and there is nostalgia in that. Then it’s off for the walk down the road to birth a new child, a new project. A full circle. It’s almost magic.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: Sarah Hunter
• Facebook: Sarah Hunter
• Other: Substack