Footloose The Musical 2022

Sara has designed over 160 productions, for a wide variety of theatres, venues, sites and genres. She was associate artist at the Mercury Theatre, Colchester, from 2008 to 2012, and has designed over 25 shows there including: Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street (with Sophie-Louise Dann and Hugh Maynard); the first national tour of Betty Blue Eyes (in co-production with West Yorkshire Playhouse, Liverpool Theatres and Salisbury Playhouse); Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Private Lives, Quadrophenia, Top Girls, The Lonesome West, the premiere of Fraser Grace’s King David, Man of Blood; Depot, a huge multidiscipline, promenade, sitespecific collaborative project, and an acclaimed production of Journey’s End.

As well as Posh, current projects include: Monty Python’s Spamalot for the Mercury Theatre and UK national tour (Selladoor); new production Everything Is Possible: the York Suffragettes for Pilot and York Theatre Royal; and the UK and new international tour of Footloose, also for Selladoor.

Recent projects include: American Idiot, the Green Day musical (West End, 2015–2016) and 2016 UK tour (Selladoor); Bryony Lavery’s adaptation of Brideshead Revisited (English Touring Theatre and York Theatre Royal); Any Means Necessary (based on the ongoing inquiries into illegal undercover police activity - Nottingham Playhouse); costume design for The Snow Queen (Royal & Derngate); Blood (a new play for Tamasha); the first UK production of Dancehall (Cast, Doncaster - based on the seminal French film Le Bal) and How to Breathe (a new play for Nottingham Playhouse).

Other credits include: The Glee Club (the opening show for arts complex Cast, Doncaster); Hello, Dolly!, Gypsy and Hot Stuff (Curve, Leicester); The King and I (Curve and national tour); Laurie Sansom’s Young America season at the National Theatre, from the Royal & Derngate, Northampton, comprising of Tennessee Williams’ Spring Storm in rep with Eugene O’Neill’s Beyond the Horizon; The Wind in the Willows, Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz (also for the Royal); Neil LaBute’s Helter Skelter/Land of the Dead/ The Furies (touring for the Bush and Dialogue); Forgotten Things and Ugly (touring for Red Ladder); Treasure Island (Derby Playhouse); The Elixir of Love (Grange Park Opera - co-design); Rough for Theatre one and two (Arts, London); Return to the Forbidden Planet (national tour); Dead Funny (Oldham and national tour); By Parties Unknown: the Crypt Project (site-specific at St Andrew’s Church, London, for Sincera); The Ladykillers (Northcott, Exeter) and Union Street (Plymouth Theatre Royal’s millennium project with a cast of 230).

She also designed the original and several subsequent productions of the cult spacerock musical Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens. She was also associate designer with English Touring Theatre for three years under Stephen Unwin, and for productions that included Peter Gill’s The York Realist (tour and West End); King Lear (Old Vic), as well as her own production of Romeo and Juliet (national tour and Hong Kong Arts Festival). In 2010, she returned to ETT to design Eden End in co-production with Royal & Derngate, Northampton. She has also designed with and for students at LAMDA,
RADA, Central School of Speech and Drama, Arts Educational Schools, Mountview, Creative Partnerships and back at Bristol Old Vic where she trained.

She was nominated for both BroadwayWorld UK Awards (set design and costume design) and a WhatsOnStage Award (set design), and for American Idiot holds an Edinburgh Fringe First, the John Elvery Theatre Design Award and a Vision Design (Costume) Award from the BBC.