Sara Bickweat Penner (she/her) is an actor, director, intimacy director and voice and movement specialist who has worked extensively in theatre in NYC, Chicago, and regionally throughout the U.S. She holds an MFA from The Actors Studio, The New School for Drama and has worked with Arthur Penn, Lloyd Richards, Robert Lupone, Paul Rudd, Joe Calarco, Vernice Miller, and Elizabeth Kemp and many others. She has performed and produced in the NY, Berkshire, Minneapolis and Rochester Fringe Festivals and loves the creation of new work or the reimagining of established plays in a new way. As an intimacy director Sara is passionate about collaborating in rehearsal rooms where she can support the director’s vision and the actors’ boundaries so that artists can create their bravest, truest, most imaginative work (accredited by IDC, Level 4).

Sara is a senior lecturer of acting, voice and movement in the University of Rochester’s International Theatre Program and works in both academic and professional settings. In 2022 Sara received a Teaching Innovation Grant to create instructional touch policies, practices and coursework at UR on Consent in Performance, and developed an Eastman Institute for Music leadership course in Spring 2023 for vocal performance and opera students. Sara is resident intimacy director for URITP, and her intimacy and movement direction has been on stages at Nazareth College, RIT/ National Technical Institute for the Deaf, Geva Theatre, RCP’s Shakespeare in the Park, The Company Theatre’s Temple Theatre, ROC JCC CenterStage, The Musical Theatre Company Chicago, and many others. She has taught workshops on Intimacy Direction and Consent in Performance at Geva Summer Academy, SUNY Brockport, Rochester Institute of Technology, Eastman School of Music, and Blackfriars Theatre.