Sarah Rose Kearns
PLAYWRIGHT, JANEITE, ACTIVIST, PERFORMER, PRODUCER
Hi, I'm Rose! How lovely that you're here.
My name is Sarah Rose Kearns — I go by Rose, my middle name — and I am a playwright, actor, and the founding artistic director of The Holy Theatre, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit arts organization in New York City, with a mission to make plays and other gatherings that leave people feeling nourished, connected, and more able to be brave.
Jane Austen has long been a source of fascination for me, and I've now written three different plays inspired by her oeuvre: Persuasion, Manydown, and The Austens. Persuasion, a stage adaptation of her soulful final novel, debuted off-Broadway in 2021; it afterwards received a two-week workshop from The Holy Theatre, and it's having its second full production this fall at Chesapeake Shakespeare Company in Baltimore, under the direction of Megan Behm.
My thirty-minute play Manydown, which imagines one important night in the lives of Jane Austen and her beloved sister, has been performed at libraries, schools, conferences, and theatres in five US states, as well as in the UK and New Zealand. In 2021, Manydown was produced as an audio drama, starring Laura Rocklyn as Jane, with myself as Cassandra. And it's currently being adapted as a short film by my colleague Prerna Ramachandra.
The newest of the trio, The Austens, is a full-length play about Jane Austen and her family that takes place in the spring of 1810, several years after the incident depicted in Manydown — when Jane was 34 and still unpublished, notwithstanding decades of intense dedication to her craft.
In 2022, thanks to a fellowship from The Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA), I had an extraordinary opportunity to conduct research for this play at the Austen historic sites in Chawton, England. Three years later, in June 2025, The Austens had its world-premiere staged reading at Chawton House — a building that was once owned by their brother, next door to the cottage where they lived and where the story transpires.
Within the last eight or nine years, whilst creating these three plays, I have also grown more and more immersed in the global community of Jane Austen fans and scholars. I spoke at my first Austen conference in North Carolina in 2017. Since its inception in 2020, I have served as a member of the JASNA committee for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. In 2023, I assumed the post of co-Regional Coordinator for our local JASNA New York Metropolitan Region.
Jane's art seems to lend itself quite naturally to the great task of art: that of being a bridge between people — a conduit of emotional connection and understanding, a maker of meaning, and a builder of community. It's amazing to me what a big tent Jane Austen's readers are. Her work speaks so powerfully to so many of us: readers of every generation, from all walks of life, across time and space.
My intention as an artist and organizer within this niche is to make the most of such richness. My work, like Jane Austen's, celebrates the values of integrity, authenticity, empathy, and creativity; and I'm passionate about making "the Janehood" a welcoming space for everyone who wants to be a part of it.
