Sarah Jones
Tony® & Obie Award-Winning Playwright & Performer
Sarah Jones
Tony® & Obie Award-Winning Playwright & Performer
Check Fees And Availability for Sarah Jones
Biography
Hailed by The New York Times as a “master of the genre,” Tony Award-winning solo performer Sarah Jones is an actor/writer/director/producer and the founder of Foment Productions, an entertainment company focused on cultivating a culture of belonging. Jones is known for the mix of humor and empathy in her characters inspired by her real, multiracial family and community.
Renowned as “a one-woman global village,” she has appeared on stages from Broadway to The White House, has given four main-stage TED Talks, and performed around the world as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. Her characters onstage reflect her commitment to a pluralist vision of social justice, and her projects onscreen range from Netflix’s On the Verge to her film Sell/Buy/Date, Executive Produced by Meryl Streep.
As the daughter of two physicians, Jones is passionate about public health and wrote The Cost of Not Caring which celebrates the caregiving work that makes all other work possible. Inspired by Caring Across Generations' movement to change the way Americans value and support care, the piece brings to life a medley of characters often inspired by Jones’ real-life, multiracial family. These voices represent a span across class, culture, ability, gender and generations as they navigate the joy, frustrations and hilarity of providing and receiving care.
Her latest project, America, Who Hurt You? started as an acclaimed podcast (featuring guests like Jane Fonda, Bryan Stevenson and Laverne Cox) and is now an acclaimed new play, originally commissioned by Oxford University for a historic premiere at their first-ever performing arts center. The show, co-produced by Foment Productions, is slated to tour the US in connection with its 250th Anniversary and beyond.
Speaker Videos
Sizzle Reel
Sell/Buy/Date
On Her Creative Process
Portraying Her Characters in Real Life
Using Her Characters to Support Multiculturalism and Understanding
Speech Topics
Women Can’t Wait
Women Can’t Wait! is Sarah’s second one-person show. It was commissioned by the human rights group Equality Now and the Ford Foundation, which provided a grant to fund Sarah’s research, writing, and performance of the piece. Women Can’t Wait! premiered at the International “Beijing +5” United Nations Conference on Women’s Rights in June, 2000. The piece exposed laws which discriminate against women around the world. Sarah portrayed eight women from eight different countries, including the United States, and their struggle to turn the personal devastation caused by discriminatory laws into a force for positive change. The experiences of the women and girls from Japan, India, Uruguay, Israel, Jordan, France, Kenya and the United States depicted in the piece were based on numerous real life events and interviews. Following its first performance, Women Can’t Wait! was featured in The New York Times and landed Sarah on the cover of Ms. Magazine.
Sarah continued to perform the piece for audiences across the country and the world including United Nations delegates; in five cities throughout India; in Slovenia; in Mexico; and for the Supreme Court of Nepal in Kathmandu as part of a historic campaign in which Nepali activists and Equality Now partnered to advocate for laws supporting women’s human rights.
A Right to Care
In 2005, Sarah premiered A Right to Care, which was commissioned by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, alongside keynote speaker President Jimmy Carter at WKKF’s 75th Anniversary Conference. With the goal of addressing issues of ethnic, racial, and economic disparities in health care, Sarah and Kellogg partnered to create an informative show which highlights the multicultural and class dimensions of our national health care crisis. The daughter of two physicians, Sarah approaches the issues in the piece from the standpoint that health care and public health are not only matters of equal access to high quality services for all, but of broader racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic inequities. Sarah currently performs A Right to Care for organizations including universities, schools of public health, philanthropic foundations, grass roots community groups, and conferences around the United States.
Specially Tailored Performances
In addition to her full-length one-person shows, Sarah is frequently invited to perform specially created versions of her character monologues for various functions and organizations such as community groups, educational and university conferences, corporate retreats, and non-profit benefits. Recent performances have ranged from private events for entertainment companies such as Time Warner and the CBS Corporation to hosting the Gotham Independent Film Awards to appearances for the National Down Syndrome Society, Planned Parenthood, and Sakhi for South Asian Women.
)
)
)
)