About

Sara Sharpe LaMance, founder of both Festive Evolution and STILL/WILD: Contemplative Practice for Change-making Women, is an award-winning actress, writer, and Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness coach. She is the creator of THE LETTERS PROJECT: LETTERS FROM ACROSS THE (political) DIVIDE, which seeks to bridge the divide between left-leaning and right-leaning Americans.

 

Sara's political bridge-building work began years ago with her documentary/docudrama FAIRVIEW: An American Conversation. The film and stage production attempts to reconcile liberal and conservative residents of a rural Tennessee town. 

 

​Sara is the former Artistic Director and co-founder of the former BroadAxe Theatre (Best New Theatre Company, 2001 Nashville Scene), Nashville’s most political theatre, and one which joins the long tradition of popular theatres working to unravel and express the root causes of social and political ills. Nashville audiences will remember her as Karla in Steve Earle's world premier of Karla (Tennie award, Best Actress).

 

Sara is the co-author--along with playwright Christine Mather--of  "Voices  of Nashville," a play, commissioned by the Tennessee Women's Theatre Project, which explores the experience of immigrants in our region. Voices premiered in Nashville, Tennessee at the Z. Alexander Looby Theater, and promptly received a grant from the Nissan Foundation to tour the city. Two years after its inception, having lost none of its potency, Voices went up second time as TWTP's main stage production.

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As a last hurrah in Nashville, Sara finished a stint at the Nashville Public Defender's Office where she served as Communication Coordinator (a highlight of her career). During her tenure there, Sara designed and executed the DEFEND NASHVILLE campaign as a way of educating Nashvillians about myriad injustices plaguing the criminal justice system. ​

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Sara has recently moved home to Chattanooga, TN where she lives with her husband (and fellow Tinker Gnome) Jim. In their spare time, Sara and Jim can be found tinkering in their wood shop.