Sarah Hammond

Sarah Hammond grew up in Hong Kong, Belgium, and South Carolina. Now based in South Philadelphia, she’s a playwright, bookwriter, and lyricist. Sarah held a seven-year playwriting residency at New Dramatists, where she wrote Green Girl, Kudzu, and House on Stilts. During that time, she began writing musicals, first as a bookwriter, then as a lyricist, and subsequently won the Kleban Prize in Musical Theatre for lyric writing. She wrote the book and lyrics for Theatreworks USA’s Pete the Cat (Off-Broadway; four national tours) and the book for String (Village Theatre World Premiere 2018; Richard Rodgers Award; NAMT). String was developed at the O’Neill Music Theatre Conference, NAMT ’14, and the inaugural Oscar Hammerstein Festival at the Bucks County Playhouse. String also won the Frederick Loewe Award at New Dramatists, a NAMT residency grant, the Weston Playhouse New Musicals Award, and the Richard Rodgers Prize. Along the way, Sarah has been the recipient of an Uncharted Residency at Ars Nova, the Lippmann Family “New Frontier” Award, Actors Theatre of Louisville’s Heideman Award, commissions from South Coast Repertory and Broadway Across America, and a residency at The Royal National Theatre in London. Current musical works-in-progress include Wind-Up Girl and Pete the Cat’s Big Hollywood Adventure.

Sarah’s plays have been produced at the Summer Play Festival at The Public, Trustus Theatre, Hangar Lab, City Theatre Summer Shorts, Live Girls! Theater, Collaboraction, Tulsa New Works for Women, and several universities. Her short plays are published in Ten-Minute Plays for 2 Actors: The Best of 2004 (Smith and Kraus), Great Short Plays: Volume 6 (Playscripts, Inc.), and Off Off Broadway Festival Plays, 42nd Series (Samuel French).

She holds an MFA in playwriting from the University of Iowa, another MFA in musical theatre writing from NYU, and a BA in English from the University of South Carolina. She has taught playwriting at Bennington College, the University of Rochester, Young Playwrights Inc., the University of Iowa, and the University of South Carolina.