SARAH
SARAH
Adapted and directed for the stage by Oliver Reese
From the novel The Sarah Book by Scott McClanahan
Scott Jonathan Slinger Costume Designer Elina Schnizler
Set & Props Facilitator Katja Pech
Lighting Designer Steffen Heinke Composition Jörg Gollasch
Musical Adaptation George Rigby
Casting Director Helena Palmer CDG Fight Director Renny Krupinski Stage Manager Nick Graham
Assistant to the Director Rasa Niurkaitė
SARAH IN REHEARSAL
PRODUCTION PHOTOS
Jonathan Slinger
Recent theatre includes Caucasian Chalk Circle (Rose Theatre, Kingston), Oleanna (Bath Theatre Royal / West End), Crave (Chichester Festival Theatre), Fanny and Alexander (Old Vic), Trouble in Mind (The Coronet Theatre), Plastic (Theatre Royal Bath), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (West End), Urinetown (St James Theatre / West End). His many RSC appearances include Hamlet , All’s Well That Ends Well , The Tempest , The Comedy of Errors , Twelfth Night , The Homecoming , Macbeth , Richard II, Richard III , Henry VI , Henry V, Comedy of Errors , The American Pilot and A Midsummer Night’s Dream . For The National Theatre Absolute Hell , Power , The Duchess of Malfi , Utopia , Widowers’ Houses , Richard II and The Machine Workers Other work includes Yes, Prime Minister (Chichester Festival Theatre), Uncle Vanya (Young Vic), Bones (Hampstead Theatre), Medea (Queen’s Theatre), Mother Courage (Contact Theatre), The Winter’s Tale and The Maid’s Tragedy (Shakespeare’s Globe).
TV includes: Shadow & Bone (Netflix), Alex Rider (Amazon), Kiri (Channel 4). For the BBC his work includes The Sixth Commandment , The Salisbury Poisonings , I May Destroy You , Nelson in his Own Words , Playing Ball , Vexed , Paradox , Hustle , Little Dorrit , Out of Hours and To the Ends of the Earth . Other TV includes Foyle’s War Cold Feet (ITV) and Stick With Me Kid (Disney Channel).
Film: The Taking , Harmony , A Knight’s Tale , Forgive and Forget , The Last September , Spring Awakening
CAST
CREATIVE TEAM
Oliver Reese
Adaptation and director
Oliver Reese is a German director, dramaturg/ playwright, and has been Artistic Director of the Berliner Ensemble since 2017/18. He was born in 1964 and studied Modern German and Comparative Literature in Munich. He was Head Dramaturg at the Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin, Head Dramaturg, Deputy Artistic Director and then interim Artistic Director at the Deutsches Theater Berlin (DT). From 2009 to 2017 he was Artistic Director of Schauspiel Frankfurt.
Reese has staged several plays based on biographical texts in Berlin, Frankfurt and Vienna. Many of his productions are his own dramatisations of novels or documentary material, such as Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities , Günter Grass’ The Tin Drum , Panic Heart by Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre, My Name is Gantenbein by Max Frisch, Goebbels from the diaries of Joseph Goebbels and a dramatisation of Nabokov’s Lolita which won the FriedrichLuft-Preis for best Berlin production. Reese is particularly interested in current material and contemporary plays by living authors.
Scott McClanahan Novelist, The Sarah Book
Scott McClanahan, described as “ arguably the most authentic and gutsy and best young writer working today ” by The Literary Hub, is a writer, economist, explorer, and martial artist. He lives in Beckley, West Virginia and is the author of eight books including Crapalachia, The Incantations of Daniel Johnston , Hill William , The Sarah Book and the Collected Works Vol. 1 The Sarah Book was described by NPR as “ brave, triumphant and beautiful — it reads like a fever dream, and it feels like a miracle ”. The Washington Post has called McClanahan’s work “ the genuine article ” and The Millions has called him “ The Poet Laureate of Real America .” He is also co-founder of Holler Presents and half of the band Holler Boys. a West Virginia-based production and small press company. He lives in West Virginia with the writer Juliet Escoria.
Elina Schnizler Costume Designer
Elina Schnizler is a renowned German costume designer and director of the costume department of the Berliner Ensemble Theatre. After stays in Helsinki and Chicago, she started her career in Stuttgart and then worked at Christian Dior’s haute couture in Paris before studying costume design in Hamburg. Since 1994, she has been a freelance costume designer for film, opera and theatre productions with a remarkable record of celebrated and award-winning theatre plays at many of the premium theatres in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. She has worked with some of the most illustrious directors such as Hans Neuenfels and Stephan Märki for opera, and over a long period with Oliver Reese, who engaged her as the costume director at the Berliner Ensemble in 2017. Elina has since designed the costumes for at least one production per season, such as for Sarah , which she completely re-arranged for the Coronet Theatre’s brand-new adaptation.
Katja Pech Set and Props Facilitator
Katja Pech, born in Bonn, studied stage and costume design at the Kunsthochschule Berlin Weißensee. There she was a master student with Prof. Peter Schubert in 2018. She has been working at the Berliner Ensemble since 2020 - her work as a stage and costume designer can currently be seen in the productions Aufzeichnungen aus dem Kellerloch (director: Max Lindemann) and Opheliamaschine (director: Uršulė Barto). The magazine Theater heute nominated her in 2022 in the category Best Young Artist . She also works for film and has, for example, done the set and costume design for the award-winning film Ladybitch (directed by Marina Prados and Paula Knüpling).
Steffen Heinke Lighting Designer
Steffen Heinke, born in Berlin in 1967, trained as an electrician for artistic lighting at the Komische Oper Berlin from 1983. He also trained as a photographer and cinema projectionist.
Since 1985 he has been employed as a lighting technician at the Berliner Ensemble, later in lighting design/operation and since 1996 as lighting master. At the Berliner Ensemble he has been involved in numerous theatre productions, in particular Robert Wilson productions ( Ocean Flight ; Danton’s Death ; Leonce and Lena ; The Winter’s Tale ; Shakespeare Sonnets ; The Threepenny Opera ). In 1995 he was involved in the legendary production of Bertolt Brecht’s Der aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui directed by Heiner Müller, as part of a team of three responsible for lighting design. As a sideline, he is self-employed as a lighting designer/lighting master and was for many years a member of the Ensemble Weil...
Jörg Gollasch Composition
After studying applied cultural sciences in Hildesheim, Jörg Gollasch worked at the Deutsches Theatre in Berlin. There (and later at the Schaubühne), he worked as a composer and musical director with Thomas Ostermeier.
Since 2002 he has worked as a freelance composer, arranger and producer at various theatres, including Burgtheater Wien, Schauspielhaus Zürich, the Berliner Ensemble, and the Maxim Gorki Theatre. He is a long term collaborator of Karin Beier, head of the Hamburger Schauspielhaus, with whom he has been working for almost 25 years.
Gollasch has also worked as a composer for radio plays and participated in productions for broadcasters such as SWR, SWF, RBB, and Deutschlandradio. He is also a lecturer and a teacher at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Art and a film composer, working with directors such as Hank Levine, and Hanno Olderdissen and Charly Hübner.
George Rigby Musical Adaptation
George Rigby is a composer, sound designer, and orchestrator. Most recently, George has assisted in the music production for Ron Howard’s Thirteen Lives (2022), Daniel Espinosa’s Morbius (2022), while working under acclaimed composers Benjamin Wallfisch and Jon Ekstrand. Earlier this year, George produced the sound design for Henrik Ibsen’s When We Dead Awaken (2022), directed by Kjetil Bang-Hansen, while also assisting in score production for composer Peter Gregson. Prior to this, George composed the score for Debbie Hannon’s After Rhinoceros: The Red Pill (2020) and his own Trails of Men (2021).
In 2021, George graduated from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama with a first class honors degree in composition. Before this, He gained invaluable experience apprenticing with the likes of James Newton-Howard, Gabriel Yared and Guy Farley, paving the way to a career in composition. Also working in TV, George’s music has also been featured in BBC One’s Britain’s Great Rivers: Then & Now (2020), Animal Park (2020), Wales This Week and PBS America.
Helena Palmer CDG Casting Director
Helena is a freelance casting director with over 20 years’ experience, specialising in theatre. She began her casting career at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester and then with the National Theatre. She was Casting Director at the RSC where she worked for twelve years casting over 50 classical and contemporary plays.
Current projects include: Linck & Mülhahn (Hampstead Theatre), Cymbeline (RSC), The Tempest (RSC), The Wind in the Willows Wilton’s (Wilton’s Music Hall), Mary (Hampstead Theatre).
Recent theatre work includes: Dmitry (Marylebone Theatre), The Fever Syndrome (Hampstead Theatre); Blackmail (Mercury, Colchester); The Mirror and the Light (Gielgud Theatre) and Antigone (Mercury, Colchester).
Helena is a member of the Casting Directors’ Guild.
THE CORONET THEATRE TEAM
Artistic Director & CEO
Anda Winters
General Manager
Andy McDonald
Head of Development and Partnerships
Raphaëlle Rodocanachi
Senior Producer Hetty Shand Finance Manager Andrew Michel
Producer Daphne Seale
Assistant Producer / PA to Artistic Director Lola Gabellini
Associate Producer Cathy Lewis
Company & Production Coordinator
Emma Smith
Social Media Manager Alex Hick Marketing Officer Elliot Hall Press Representative Sharon Kean Development Assistant Tae Lee
Poetry Coordinator Marion Manning
Audience Experience Manager
Giudi Di Gesaro
Duty Managers
Francesca Battinieri
Céline Castillon
Rachel Goodsall Rasa Niurkaitė Renata Wilson
Front of House Staff
Sara Beranek Hvattum
Ivana Dieli
Ewa Emini
Adrielle Felciano Joanne Gale
Maria Lisberg-Jonasson Brian Maitland Nadia Qashou Andreane Rellou Sofia Armella Riccardo Tito Pescini
Zsuzsa Magyar
Sua Tsubokura-Aguiriano Julia Pilkington Penelope Caswell Maya Kalnin
Samuel Tannenbaum
Trustees
Linda Bernhardt Mike Fisher Mimi Gilligan Jane Quinn Anda Winters Bill Winters (Chair)
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