First Stages

Hi, I’m Sarah … or Sara Lara as I’m unfailingly called by anyone who’s known me for a while. It’s an old family nickname dating back to when I was a kid and it just seems to have stuck. Like most people who start a blog I suspect, I’m not at all sure where to begin this one … I think I’ll just plunge in.

I live in Southern California in a smallish university town, and have lived for nearly twenty years now (wow, I’m getting old). My husband Alex and I met while we were in college here and completely fell in love with the area … we tried living in Los Angeles briefly after we graduated, but hightailed it back here just as soon as we could. Both of us are professors at the university; I’m in the English department, while he teaches theatre. We actually met in the theatre department as undergraduates and for both of us theatre is our first real love.

While formally I’m in the English department, my specialty is 20th century theatre and many of my classes are cross-registered with theatre. I had thoughts once of being a dramaturg, but eventually decided to stick with academia and I’m pleased that I did. (For those unfamiliar with the term dramaturg, I’ll try and remember to revisit it in a future post).

As I mentioned, Alex is also a professor and he teaches directing, mainly to graduate students. He also directs fairly regularly in the university theatre season, so tends to keep pretty strange hours sometimes. When a play’s in rehearsal he’s gone most evenings until 10 or 11 at night, so our home life can be a bit unstructured sometimes.

Just as I wasn’t sure where to start, I’m not too sure where to stop … so I’ll just stop. More next time.