My CV

Sarah Lawrence

Playwright/Screenwriter

Lawrence's brand new screenplay Peace So Sweet earned a coveted Stage 32 Double Recommend in May, 2023. It won the Montreal International Women's Film Festival, just advanced to the Semifinal Round (February 2024) at Outstanding Screenplays  and has been selected or placed at The Page Turner Screenplay Competition (Quarterfinalist), LA International Screenplay Awards, Santa Barbara Intl, and four others. 

Her big-Ass Texas Musical Yellow Rose is headed to commercial production after a successful 2023 workshop t with director Tracey Conyer Lee and Texas composers Terry Langfitt and Paul Gandolfi. 

Lawrence's most recent play Gimme Shelter placed as a second-rounder in the Austin Film Festival in 2022 as a first draft. After a major rewrite, it earned a Semifinalist in the O'Neill Competition. 

Duende: Recuerdos de Flamenco was chosen for a residency by the Good to Go Festival and the National Winter Playwrights Retreat. It was chosen for the Dramatists Guild Footlights series and presented as a staged reading in Summer, 2021. It placed as a Second Rounder at the Austin Film Festival in 2019. It also won Best Stageplay in the Moondance International Film Festival in 2019.

Bibo and Bertie was presented in the ZOOM Public Potentials Internet Reading Series in San Antonio as a staged reading in 2020. It was first produced by the Lab Theater Project in Tampa in 2018. 

Lawrence's first play, Liberty, was the recipient of the Southern Playwrights’ Award.  As such, it was awarded a full production and went on to become a national finalist at the American College Theater Festival at the Kennedy Center. It recently placed in the Top 3 of the Book Pipeline Award, as well as in the Screencraft Competition, Stageplay Division. It earned a Semifinalist at the O'Neill in 2018, as well as the The screenplay adaptation was a finalist in the 

Lawrence wrote six plays in the 1990s and enjoyed some early success, including winning a national comedy contest with her send-up of Elvis worship, The King and Me.  In Dallas, she founded and served for many years as Executive Director of the Playwrights Project, a regional play development organization. In this capacity, she raised money to sponsor staged readings with professional actors, directors, and dramaturgs for 25 area playwrights, as well as fund an annual playwriting competition. She also established a lecture series for the group that brought in noted playwrights such as Edward Albee, Erik Ehn, and Suzan-Lori Parks. Lawrence is also the author of several nonfiction books, including Entrepreneurship: Building the American Dream (West Educational Publishing, 1994) and 50 Great Business Ideas for Teens (Simon & Schuster/Arco, 1990 & 1997). 

Lawrence completed her MFA, Writing for Stage and Screen, at the New Hampshire Institute of Arts in January, 2016. During that time, she completed four full-length works: Yellow Rose, A More Perfect Union—an adaptation for the screen of her play Liberty; Duende: Recuerdos de Flamenco; and most recently Bibo & Bertie, a play about the last year in Albert Einstein’s life. 

In addition to her MFA, she holds a masters degree in international management. She has served in management positions at Rockwell International, Chestnut Petroleum and the accounting firm of Peat, Marwick and Mitchell. Her teaching experience includes posts in the MBA schools at the Universities of Iowa, Texas, and Hong Kong.  She also holds significant nonprofit management experience, serving as Executive Director of the Texas Composers Forum, the Playwrights Project and then from 2004-2008, as head of Angel Flight, a social service agency providing free air transportation to patients requiring medical treatment away from home.  In her spare time, she enjoys being a performing church musician and plays the pipe organ, piano and harp.