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Sarah Jones
Tony® & Obie Award-Winning Playwright & Performer, Bridge & Tunnel
Sarah Jones
Tony® & Obie Award-Winning Playwright & Performer, Bridge & Tunnel
Biography
Sarah Jones is a Tony ® Award-winning visionary and solo-performer. The New York Times called her a “master of the genre.” Sarah is the director, writer, producer, and star of the film Sell/Buy/Date (2022) based on her acclaimed play of the same title. The film, produced by her company Foment Productions and executive produced by Academy Award-winner Meryl Streep, explores the intersection of racial identity, gender justice and economic disparities through the lens of people in the sex industry, with the intention to empower and center their stories.
An actor, comedian, writer, producer, and activist, Sarah is a multi-faceted and brilliant thought leader who seeks to impact more than just the entertainment industry. As part of a deeply personal and vulnerable journey to reckon with her own unique experiences as a Black woman with multicultural roots, she is devoted to building a movement that promotes collective healing and affirmation for all people, starting with Black women and femmes.
A trailblazer, Sarah won her case as the first artist in history to sue the Federal Communications Commission for censorship when they banned her poem about misogyny in popular music, “Your Revolution.”
Sarah has been invited to the coveted TED Talk stage a record four times with millions of views each time. In her latest talk, she reframes “cancel culture” as a way to have meaningful discussions about social justice by poignantly noting that Black communities, communities of color, LGBTQAI+ individuals, women and other “minorities” have already been canceled for hundreds of years. Sarah provides a powerful call to action for allies with good intentions to begin the real work toward solutions that dismantle systemic injustice.
As the founder of Foment Productions, a progressive production company, Sarah is determined to continue to add to conversations about issues impacting long-underserved communities. She leads her productions with a purpose.
Sarah’s advocacy is interconnected with her remarkable career. She performed multiple times at the White House for President and Mrs. Obama, as well as at The World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and has served as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. Sarah also sits on advisory boards and creative councils including The Center for Reproductive Rights, Democracy Now, A Call To Men, and The Meteor.
Born in Baltimore, MD, Sarah also grew up in Boston, MA and Washington, DC; before landing in Queens, NY, which helped shape her diverse characters. She is currently based in Los Angeles, CA where she enjoys everything from hiking to surfing to dancing…and if this sounds like a dating profile, that’s fitting since she’s also swiping for her progressive Mr. Right when not hanging out with her Siamese fur baby, Sui.
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.
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