Bio
Two-time Obie Award-winning playwright Sarah Gancher loves epic stories, big ideas, and deep comedy. Her most frequent subject is how history is reflected in individual lives—how places, communities, and debates evolve over time. Her plays have been produced or developed at London’s National Theatre, Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre, The Public, New York Theater Workshop, Playwrights Horizons, The Vineyard, Second Stage, The Atlantic, Berkeley Rep, Steppenwolf, New York Stage and Film, Ars Nova, WP Theatre, The Flea, La Jolla Playhouse, Seattle Rep, Geva Theatre, Hartford Stage, RoundHouse, Forward Theatre, Mosaic (DC), Theatre J, P73, NYC Summerstage, and Telluride Theatre, among others. She has been a Time Warner Fellow at the WP Playwrights Lab, a member of P73’s writer’s group, a Playwrights' Realm Writing Fellow, a member of the Orchard Project's Greenhouse Lab, and a member of the Ars Nova Play Group. She is a resident at New Dramatists.
Sarah is the winner of the Richard Rodgers Award for Musical Theatre, New York Stage and Film Founder’s Award, and the Edgerton Foundation New Play Award. Her play The Wind and the Rain won an OBIE for playwriting, was nominated for a Drama Desk for Outstanding Unique Theatrical Experience, and was named one of the year's best productions of 2024 by Vulture. Her play Russian Troll Farm won a special citation OBIE Award, and was named one of the year's ten best productions of 2020 by the New York Times. Other honors include the AR Gurney Prize, the Clifford Odets Ensemble Play Commission, a Toulmin Foundation Commission, the James Stevenson Prize for Comedy, a Venturous Foundation finishing grant, a NYSCA fellowship, and residencies from The Hermitage, Jewish Plays Project, Tofte Lakes, and SPACE at Ryder Farm. She served as the curator of SPACE at Ryder Farm's Family Residency. She has been a playwright-in-residence at Budapest’s Quarter6Quarter7 Festival, which presented Hungarian language staged readings of three plays from her 7th cycle (Seder, Klauzál Square, and Five Mothers.)
Sarah frequently collaborates with devising ensembles. Her latest musical in development, Eugene Onegin, was a 2024 and 2025 finalist for the Kleban Prize in Musical Theatre, and won the Denovan Fellowship from Second Stage. She has written two musicals with rock band The Bengsons: The Lucky Ones, a commission for Ars Nova, and Hundred Days, which had its New York premiere at the 2017 Under the Radar festival at the Public and went on to rave reviews at New York Theatre Workshop and a national tour. Both The Lucky Ones and Hundred Days garnered a number of Lortel, Drama League, and Drama Desk nominations and wins. Sarah was the collaborating playwright on Mission Drift, a musical about capitalism and the myth of the frontier written with director Rachel Chavkin, composer Heather Christian, and The TEAM. Mission Drift toured to Coimbra, Lisbon, Salzburg, the Edinburgh Fringe, PS 122's COIL Festival, Perth, Hong Kong, and London's National Theatre, and along the way it won the Edinburgh International Festival Fringe Award, a Scotsman Fringe First, a Herald Angel, and a Drama League nomination for Distinguished Production of a Musical. It was included on The Guardian's Top 50 Shows of the 21st Century.
Sarah has written for Blue Man Group, Cirque du Soleil, and Madison Square Garden, has rewritten shows for Broadway, and has worked behind the scenes at The Colbert Report, The Metropolitan Opera Guild, The Big Apple Circus, and Norway’s Stellapolaris, among others. She currently teaches playwriting at NYU Tisch's Department of Dramatic Writing and The New School's MFA Playwriting program. As a jazz and bluegrass violinist, Sarah has played in groups from New Orleans to Budapest. A proud Oakland native, she lives in Queens. MFA: NYU.
PS. I am not Sarah Gancher Sarai. You can find her here!
Sarah is the winner of the Richard Rodgers Award for Musical Theatre, New York Stage and Film Founder’s Award, and the Edgerton Foundation New Play Award. Her play The Wind and the Rain won an OBIE for playwriting, was nominated for a Drama Desk for Outstanding Unique Theatrical Experience, and was named one of the year's best productions of 2024 by Vulture. Her play Russian Troll Farm won a special citation OBIE Award, and was named one of the year's ten best productions of 2020 by the New York Times. Other honors include the AR Gurney Prize, the Clifford Odets Ensemble Play Commission, a Toulmin Foundation Commission, the James Stevenson Prize for Comedy, a Venturous Foundation finishing grant, a NYSCA fellowship, and residencies from The Hermitage, Jewish Plays Project, Tofte Lakes, and SPACE at Ryder Farm. She served as the curator of SPACE at Ryder Farm's Family Residency. She has been a playwright-in-residence at Budapest’s Quarter6Quarter7 Festival, which presented Hungarian language staged readings of three plays from her 7th cycle (Seder, Klauzál Square, and Five Mothers.)
Sarah frequently collaborates with devising ensembles. Her latest musical in development, Eugene Onegin, was a 2024 and 2025 finalist for the Kleban Prize in Musical Theatre, and won the Denovan Fellowship from Second Stage. She has written two musicals with rock band The Bengsons: The Lucky Ones, a commission for Ars Nova, and Hundred Days, which had its New York premiere at the 2017 Under the Radar festival at the Public and went on to rave reviews at New York Theatre Workshop and a national tour. Both The Lucky Ones and Hundred Days garnered a number of Lortel, Drama League, and Drama Desk nominations and wins. Sarah was the collaborating playwright on Mission Drift, a musical about capitalism and the myth of the frontier written with director Rachel Chavkin, composer Heather Christian, and The TEAM. Mission Drift toured to Coimbra, Lisbon, Salzburg, the Edinburgh Fringe, PS 122's COIL Festival, Perth, Hong Kong, and London's National Theatre, and along the way it won the Edinburgh International Festival Fringe Award, a Scotsman Fringe First, a Herald Angel, and a Drama League nomination for Distinguished Production of a Musical. It was included on The Guardian's Top 50 Shows of the 21st Century.
Sarah has written for Blue Man Group, Cirque du Soleil, and Madison Square Garden, has rewritten shows for Broadway, and has worked behind the scenes at The Colbert Report, The Metropolitan Opera Guild, The Big Apple Circus, and Norway’s Stellapolaris, among others. She currently teaches playwriting at NYU Tisch's Department of Dramatic Writing and The New School's MFA Playwriting program. As a jazz and bluegrass violinist, Sarah has played in groups from New Orleans to Budapest. A proud Oakland native, she lives in Queens. MFA: NYU.
PS. I am not Sarah Gancher Sarai. You can find her here!