Sarah Amaral
Weekend 2: April 23-25, 2027
About Sarah Amaral
Sarah Amaral is a Mexican-Norwegian writer, director, composer, and lyricist living in Minnesota. She trained in professional theatre in the Twin Cities and continued her professional work in the performing arts overseas and in California.
Muses Minnesotan, her new musical and a love letter to her own upbringing, was inspired by a 1920s photograph of nine women posed as the Muses in an outdoor tableau. The work brings together her artistic work in writing, music, and theatre, interweaving her love of history and mythology, feminism, creativity, rural life, and personal family lore.
Fascinated by her own safety in nostalgia vs the lust for newness and the magical realism of exploration, Amaral draws inspiration from the places she has lived and the stories of her family, where women discovered that the courage to make their own lives into works of art mattered more than whether the world ever recognized them as artists. And that the place you come from is not the limit of your imagination. It may be the very reason your imagination is so expansive.
About Muses Minnesotan
It's the early 1920s, and nine sisters on a rural Minnesota farm dream of New York City, the Isadora Duncan School, and the dazzling world of Broadway. Named and educated as the classical Greek Muses, the sisters spend a summer afternoon creating photographic tableaux to showcase their artistic talents and ambitions.
But behind the serenity of a perfectly posed photograph lies a slightly chaotic family. Amid sibling rivalries, romantic imaginings, original songs, dance, and an approaching summer storm that threatens to derail their plans, the sisters confront the prospect of leaving the beloved home that shaped them.
Set against the new freedoms for women and artistic experimentation of the Jazz Age, Muses Minnesotan is an original ensemble musical about family, creativity, ambition, and the courage to embrace change.