Sarah Sneesby
Interview Highlights
Sarah’s creative mission is to create a space where each individual is valued, honored, seen, and heard.
Through her new company, Creative Movement Practices, Sarah aims to reinvent the rehearsal room as a space of collaboration, equity, and respect.
To create work/life balance in theatre, we must build a separation between the actor and the character.
To make change, we need to do the best we can and be willing to admit to and learn from our mistakes.
CW: suicidal thoughts
Sarah’s Work
Website: https://www.sarahsneesby.com/
Follow Creative Movement Practices on Facebook and Instagram!
Creative Movement Practices’ Production of Shakespeare's Macbeth will be presented at the MATCH Theatre in Houston April 29-May 7th. More information available here.
Bio
Sarah Sneesby (she/her) is the founder of Creative Movement Practices and is a freelance Director, Choreographer, and Movement and Intimacy Practitioner who dabbles in writing musicals in her spare time.
Sarah graduated with distinction with her MFA in Movement: Direction and Teaching in the Fall of 2021, with a research emphasis on the practical use of embodied linguistics in rehearsal rooms. She has also taken courses in intimacy training from TIE and utilizes their best practices for consent, body autonomy, and physical contact. Sarah takes a holistic, embodied approach to working with performers and works to the individual body rather than a uniform aesthetic. She strongly believes that her role is to adapt to the need of the individual actor or performer to provide a movement language that best connects with their body. Sarah created her company, Creative Movement Practices, to provide movement and intimacy education and production support. In addition to providing training, the company is committed to workshopping new works and producing movement-focused productions. Her company's first production is a feminist re-imagining of Shakespeare's Macbeth, which will be produced in April/May at the MATCH in Houston.
“I am different. I have something to say. That’s the revolution we’re seeing – women understanding that their difference isn’t a weakness, it’s a strength.”
Sarah’s Creative Work
Amy: We are here with the fabulous and busy Sarah Sneesby! Sarah, please tell us your name, your pronouns, and a little about the roles you play in theatre.
Sarah: My name is Sarah Sneesby, my pronouns are she/her. I am a director, choreographer, movement director, movement and intimacy practitioner, dance and movement teacher – all things movement. My hobbies are book writing, composing, and writing musicals.
Hayley: How did you come to your creative work?
Sarah: I started dancing at age five. I had an amazing dance teacher, Miss Anita, who taught us that the arts were a way to express your feelings, discover more about yourself, and share with people. I got the choreography bug training at her studio and used it as an outlet for all of those teenage emotions I didn’t know how to deal with. I started doing theatre in middle school.
My first musical that I choreographed was when I was fifteen, and it was our school production of Oklahoma. At that point, I was a dancer and I knew nothing about musical theatre. I viewed myself as a straight actress and a ballerina and that was it. And then I started choreographing musicals and fell in love with the spectrum of emotion you can portray when you combine singing, acting, and dance.
I got my degree in chemical engineering at my parents’ encouragement. I studied theatre and dance and took voice lessons on the side. I did community theatre, fringe theatre, and semi-professional theatre through my early career as an engineer. Then I got to a point where I had to choose whether to take the next promotion at work and stop doing theatre or quit my job and start doing theatre for real. So I quit my job, and it’s the best decision I’ve ever made.
I was choreographing full-time and teaching dance classes. But I knew I wanted to get more training, because I didn’t get on-the-job training as a professional actor in my twenties. In some ways that’s beneficial: I didn’t spend my twenties in a potentially harmful rehearsal room learning bad habits and being treated badly. I can walk into a rehearsal space with a fresh view on how a room should be run without personal scars from the past. But it’s also been challenging. I only recently started to figure out what it really means to be a professional director – book work, how to take a script apart, all of that. I went to grad school to get my MFA because I knew there was a knowledge gap, and I needed to take time to learn the pedagogy behind rehearsal room etiquette and teaching.
In the second half of my first year at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, COVID happened, so we switched to online. I felt lucky because I learned how to do everything in-person and online while everyone was learning that. RCSSD is currently working to decentralize their curriculum. They are looking at how to decolonize training and make classrooms and rehearsal rooms more equitable. I was there when they started that revolution. I feel lucky because I was already questioning my practice, but I got to do it during the pandemic when everything was shut down and nothing was going on anywhere.
Creative Movement Practices
Hayley: Tell us about your creative mission and how that was impacted by your education.
Sarah: I created my company that’s just now kicking off - Creative Movement Practices - to be a production support and theatrical movement education company. We are committed to facilitating a collaborative space for theatre makers that is creative, inspiring, and transformative.
Our three key words are Create, Inspire, and Transform. “Create” because I believe as a creative artist, the moment you stop creating work is the moment the arts die. Then we become something that glorifies the past instead of pushing toward the future. It doesn’t necessarily mean always creating new work, it could be recreating an old story through today’s lens. “Inspire” - we inspire artists and audiences and create vehicles for tough conversations and change. “Transformation” - because if we don’t transform each other and the audience for the better, we haven't done our job. My mission is to create a space where each individual is valued, honored, seen, and heard. I don’t run my rehearsal rooms like a hierarchy. Everyone comes in and has an equal percentage.
Amy: It’s been a common thread in our interviews, this idea of moving away from a hierarchical industry to a more collaborative one.
Sarah: I think the collaborative way is the healthy way to go. When you watch shows and get the tingles just from watching an ensemble member move across the stage, you know they are fully invested. They’re not just following a track because the swing before them created the track. In all of my studies, and all of the shows that I’ve watched, when they were fully invested, it was because it was a cooperative production where people knew what they were doing and why they were doing it. As opposed to the director saying, “No, trust me. It’s telling the story I want to tell, so Actor, move from stage right to stage left in four counts.” If you don't know why you are telling the story or what story you’re telling, what’s the point?
Amy: It’s the difference between working in service of one person’s vision versus creating a collective vision.
Hayley: You can feel it, there’s a different energy.
Amy: Sarah, tell us more about Creative Movement Practices.
Sarah: One of my goals with Creative Movement Practices is to reinvent what a rehearsal room looks like. I want to run the rehearsal room with equity and respect and challenge the way things have always been. For our first production, we are doing the Scottish Play with a cast of eleven women and seven men. It’s a feminist retelling where gender does not define casting. I looked at the spirit and energy of each individual actor and placed them in the spot they earned with that energy. My Macbeth is female, my Banquo is female, several of my warriors are kickass female swordswomen. I’m also covering childcare for any parent or mother to remove that obstacle.
Amy: That’s amazing! You’ve gotten a lot of national attention for that choice. As a brand new theatre company, you are putting your money where your values are. That is so needed, and it’s a need that hasn’t been addressed in the industry.
Sarah: It sounds crazy, but I didn’t think about it until I was a mother. We have a lot of really talented young female actors and a lot of really talented middle-aged and older female actors in the industry – but many female actors between the ages of 28 and 42 disappear for a decade. Because they had a baby, or a two-year-old, or three kids at home. So because of a patriarchal system, because of how their home-family dynamics need to be, because they can’t afford $200 a week in babysitting – all these talented women are told to sit on their talent for a decade and wait.
It is our job as mothers to raise our children. It is also our prerogative to model for our daughters – for me to model for my young daughter. She is my everything, and I will sacrifice greatly for her, and I will show her what it is to be a woman who works and paves the way forward for a better world. That means I can’t give up everything just to raise her. That is not doing a service to her. It is teaching her once you become a mom, that’s all you are. It’s not. You are still an individual. You still deserve to be seen and heard. Your talent still needs to be shown. So yeah, it’s more expensive to pay for childcare. I might lose money on the production. But I can’t in good conscience say, “You’re a mom, so you can’t be in the show.” Moms have so much to say that isn’t being heard in today’s theatre world.
Amy: Conversely, I know a lot of women who have made the choice not to have children because it isn’t compatible with a theatre career. That is a terrible shame AND a totally legitimate choice. But a choice that is made because society doesn’t support people like you is not a free choice.
Hayley: We also rarely see young mothers on stage. There is a whole spectrum of people that are not being represented in the writing.
Amy: And we don’t see working mothers on stage – at least ones who aren’t vilified. I think of Dear Evan Hansen, where he has this mother who is absent because she’s working and she’s neglectful. I was watching it and thinking, “She’s doing her best! She’s trying!”
Sarah: My hope is that will begin to change. We’ve seen lots of resets happening during the pandemic. In the arts, we are systematically the most neglectful of the morals that we preach through the stories that we tell. We are most neglectful of our own bodies, health, emotions, and relationships. We sacrifice everything for the arts. We do it because if we don’t, someone else will, so we won’t get the job.
My dream is for that to be different. For me and my company, that will be different. I’m not having 10 out of 12s. If a tech person has worked their ten-hour day, we will be done, even if the actors have only worked three. The tech person is no less human, and their health and well-being are no less important. Does that mean we need ten more people on the project so everyone can get sleep? How do we find a way to ensure that does not take away the profits, so we can make theatre without asking anyone to sacrifice who they are as an individual?
Hayley: How do we make integrity as important as efficiency or more important than efficiency?
Sarah: How can we enter a space on a project and treat everyone as a person? Respect their boundaries, their needs, and their ability to get the work done. Respect their inputs and collaborate to create something that tells the story, that fulfills the vision that the director, producer, and theatre company wants, but in a way that everyone is equally invested. That’s when you create good theatre.
Amy: It shouldn’t be a radical notion, but it is surprisingly radical.
Movement Direction and Intimacy Work
Amy: Can you tell us what it means to be a movement director?
Sarah: Before I started looking for grad schools, I had no idea what a movement director was. When I found Central’s program, I realized it’s what I have been doing my entire life.
In the musical theatre world, a choreographer typically walks into the rehearsal room with a set dance. Everything is done, and we come in and teach it. We make adaptations on the go as needed, but we hire dancers who can dance what we’ve choreographed.
A movement director builds the world of the show with the physical body. Our job is to use language, movement, improv, and exploration to help build a physical language the actors can use. Sometimes it’s about teaching what a 1940s body was like; what the rules and expectations of society were, what types of clothes they wore, how their posture differed, how they would sit and stand and walk differently – so the audience sees a physical transformation. Sometimes it’s creating abstract movement in the room. Sometimes it’s intimacy work. Sometimes it’s fight work. Sometimes it’s devising choreography with whatever the actors who have been cast bring to the table.
It might be movement coaching one-on-one with an actor, helping them find the physical differences between them and the character. That is one of the most crucial things for health and longevity for actors. That way, they can literally step into and out of their role. It keeps actors from accidentally falling in love with their co-star. It isn’t them, it is their character and a completely different embodiment. You also aren’t hiring an actor for their personal quirk that you need in that character. You are creating a separation between the self and the character.
Amy: It’s like work/life balance and healthy boundaries!
Hayley: Sarah, can you tell us about your work as an intimacy practitioner?
Sarah: My MFA in movement directing included some training and discussions in intimacy. Since then, I have taken several workshops with Theatrical Intimacy Education and incorporated a lot of that into my rehearsal room etiquette. An Intimacy Educator/Choreographer/Coordinator helps to desexualize moments of physical contact between actors or between the camera lens and the actor. To desexualize the language and make it as neutral as possible to allow for safety. They create a barrier between the actor’s personal intimate life and the intimate life they are portraying as the character.
It’s about work/life balance and the ability to zip in and out of those roles. It’s also super important because it is bringing in the conversation of physical boundaries: how much you keep on or take off, or what areas of your body you do or don’t want people to touch and how you do or don’t want people to touch them. It doesn’t matter what the boundaries are, we can tell the story while respecting actors’ boundaries. I think that’s revolutionary for girls to be told, “You can be not okay with that.” We can find a different way to tell the same story. We can do it in a safe way that gives you power over your body.
Amy: When I worked as a sex educator, I was teaching people that it’s important to enthusiastically consent to activities, to recognize and set your boundaries, that you are allowed to do that. People don’t know they’re allowed to set boundaries, and they don’t know how to because it has never been modeled. So I love that you are doing that in the rehearsal room, and hopefully life can mirror art.
Sarah: As a young actor, you're told – don’t be the person that says no. Say yes and, yes and, yes and. Now, we’re trying to go back and say “your body is your body, your choice is your choice.” It was taken away from you in your formative years of training, but now we are trying to rebuild what it looks like to say no in a healthy, collaborative way. We are trying to rebuild what it looks like to set boundaries and have conversations. What’s funny is that everyone thinks it’s going to take so much more rehearsal time to do it right. What I’ve experienced is it actually speeds up the entire process.
Giving two actors who have to be intimate a safe space to do a simple body mapping to learn what areas and what type of contact is and is not permissible, means that when we get to scene work, they already have all of that. It isn’t that awkward, “Oh, I don’t know if I can touch you there, I have this instinct, I don’t know if it’s allowed.” The relationship between the characters has already been set foundationally. It’s already been discussed. Yes, it means fifteen minutes for body mapping and ground rules. It means you won’t need to take an hour to send them off to sit and cuddle in the corner until they are comfortable with each other. That’s actor to actor, as opposed to character to character, and it’s very problematic.
It’s all about, how can we collaboratively tell the story? I don’t need to dictate what the make-out session looks like. Let’s figure out what your character’s version of a kiss is. Let’s find ways to slowly implement the physicality in a way so none of the intimacy happens until you are fully embodied in your character. You are doing these actions – placing a hand on your shoulder and moving it down in a direct line toward your elbow – an audience sees caresses, gestures, sweetness and intimacy. You are not putting yourself in that mindset. It is so much more healthy.
Womanhood and Cultural Change
Amy: Sarah, what does being a woman mean to you?
Sarah: That’s a big question. The complication with this question is I start thinking about the fact that we are not the prototypical people society has modeled around. So all the things that pop into my head are old-school women’s etiquette: Women are to be seen and not heard. Women should be wearing heels and wearing makeup, hair perfectly done, quiet in the background. You can’t speak up, and if you’re too loud then you’re bossy. Part of me just wants to take a minute to acknowledge how awful it is that the first thing I think of when asked about what it means to be a woman are all of the things I don’t think I’m allowed to do.
Amy: What’s your vision for what being a woman can mean?
Sarah: I dream of a day where my daughter or I walk into a room and don’t feel the need to minimize ourselves. I dream of a day when I don’t need to justify why I’m in the room. I dream of a day when I can give input and people don’t automatically question my credentials. Where I don’t have to explain to a tech person, “I’m an engineer, I’ve been a production manager, I’ve built sets with my hands, I know the statics and the mechanical engineering about the rotation of this and that.” I dream of the day where I can ask a question and I don’t have to defend why I’m in the room just because of my gender. Or have people automatically assume I’m going to be mean or bossy or only there because I’m filling a quota. I dream of a day where I can walk into a room and say what I have to say and gain respect for who I am as an individual and not because of my gender. That’s heavy.
Hayley: I think that will resonate with many women. It’s scary coming into a room trying to be your boldest self as a woman. We’re constantly taught and fed information that that’s not who we should be. So when that’s who we are, who we want to be, it’s like: “What does that mean about me?”
Sarah: Learning how to be unapologetically passionate. And how to support and build each other up instead of tearing other women down because there is only space for one woman on the team.
Hayley: YES!
Amy: Can you talk about how being a woman has benefitted you as an artist and if there are particular obstacles that you’ve faced because of your gender?
Sarah: It benefits me because I have a different viewpoint than a lot of collaborators in the room. My biggest strength is my difference. I grew up balancing the line between art and science. I’m the woman in the room who’s an engineer, who knows math and science, who can look at things systematically and logically. I’m also the woman in the room who feels everything very deeply and passionately. The path that life took me through wasn’t a mistake. I was meant to be an engineer, to learn how to manage huge projects, to learn how to manage the technical side of theatre. I was meant to learn how to design sets and build props to actually understand all facets of a production. As a director, it is a huge benefit to truly understand with hands-on experience what each role entails.
My biggest strength as a woman is that I have a story to tell that is different. Young working mothers, fertility struggles – those stories don’t get told because a lot of playwrights, composers, and lyricists are male. You write best what you know. If you don’t know the struggles, you have no business writing about it. I am different. I have something to say. That’s what makes it powerful. That’s the revolution we’re seeing – women understanding that their difference isn’t a weakness, it’s a strength.
Of course, I’ve been in situations where those differences have been viewed as weaknesses – where people don’t listen to me because I’m a girl. Or men have ignored my ideas and then restated them thirty seconds later like it was this genius thing. And then everyone in the room goes “That’s the smartest thing I’ve ever heard,” and I’m sitting there thinking “Am I invisible?” Any woman who’s climbed the corporate ladder, the theatre ladder, any ladder, has had that experience at least once, if not multiple times.
Hayley: Yeah.
Sarah: You should never have to get used to that feeling of invisibility, but it’s there. A dear friend, a Black actor, shared with me the idea that you always need to be doing the best you can do, being willing and open for change. So when you make a mistake, you are willing to admit you made a mistake, apologize, and take action immediately to correct your mistake for future projects. That really stuck with me. There’s a lot of change we’re demanding. Some changes are easy to implement all at once – paying for child care, revising how you work a rehearsal room, and things like that. There are other things that will take time and trial and error.
Taking the approach of “I’m trying this, it may not work, please be patient and give grace.” Cancel culture is powerful. There are aspects of it that need to happen. It’s also dangerous for people just starting out. For me, I have a fear of accidentally saying the wrong thing. The idea of being cancelled before I even start and knowing that there is so much good change I want to bring.
It’s a mantra of: How can I be better than I was yesterday? How can I bring more respect and more equity into a rehearsal room? How can I make sure that all cultures, all voices, all experiences are heard in a way that doesn’t feel belittling? How can I be open when I make a mistake? Because I will. We all will. We’ll say the wrong things because we don’t realize how systematically and culturally tied our language is to racial histories or gender histories or able-bodied mannerisms. No one is going to be perfect 100% of the time. Taking away the perfectionist mindset - you’ll never get anything done.
Hayley: We have to part with the perfect in service of the better, the good, the forward motion.
Sarah: Yeah. That is what theatre needs to be. I see a problem, here’s something that might help fix it. Something is better than nothing. Let’s see what that something does. Now we can do something better.
Final Thoughts
Hayley: Sarah, what are you most proud of in your life?
Sarah: I’m most proud that I’m here. When I was in high school, I was bullied, and I am proud that I chose to fight it out. I’m thankful that I had friends and family to keep me from doing something insanely stupid at a very young, hormonal age. Back then, my mom’s encouragement to me was: “Satan wouldn’t be trying so hard to end your life if God didn’t have big plans for it.” That may be a lot of pressure to put on a depressed, suicidal teenager, but it has really resonated with me in recent years as I look back on the path I have taken.
As I stand here on the precipice of change in the theatre world and in the world where we finally feel enabled to stand up, have a voice, and be unapologetically passionate human beings, I don’t think my path in life is a mistake. I believe every step has planned to get me here and somewhere else. I don’t know what that somewhere else is but I’m really excited to see what it is.
Amy/Hayley: Me too!
