Sarah is normally to be seen on stage acting with the City of Oxford Theatre Guild. Her stage managing experience is varied: she has stage managed a production of David Hare's The Secret Rapture; productions for the Old Gaol Theatre Company, and most recently she stepped in at two weeks notice to stage manage a production of Hamlet.
One of Sarah's philosophies of stage managing, especially in a theatre like the Oxford Playhouse, is to be in tune with the actors around her. She says "most stage managers don't act at all, so it is harder for them to understand how an actor feels. I am a stage manager who has also been on stage acting, so I can understand every feeling the actors are experiencing , from sheer terror to the great excitement after the first night". She says, "many actors don't take on the technical side of productions beacuse often the jobs are very thankless tasks - if you are doing your job well you begin to get taken for granted - as an actor you get the glory of being on stage, hearing the audience applause; as a stage manager, and all the technical jobs , you have none of that - you stay backstage and only get to go on the dtage at the end of the evening after the audience has gone home. But the job is worth it at the end of the day, because once you go into the theatre, the director hands the production over to you entirely, and if you do your job right, at the end of the week, you know that you have held together a tight, professional production".
Sarah Loveland