About

At age 3, Sarah Hoch decided to be the next Madonna.

She has been working towards that goal ever since. Although a few small edits have been made (mainly the huge addition of a Broadway stage), the dream is alive and kicking. Currently residing in Brooklyn with her lovely fiancé musical theatre composer David Kornfeld, Sarah is dedicated to auditioning, improving her craft, creating beautiful art, and adding onto her stack of Equity points.

Sarah grew up in the quaint, small-ish town of Westford, MA, where her high school theatre program laid a solid foundation of acting and singing for the stage. As a small child, her gravitation towards performance had not yet been articulated in her mind, but as she learned and grew, Sarah discovered the innate power of story-telling. She realized that theatre creates the one thing that connects us all as a human race: empathy. She decided that it was her life's calling to give that to the world, and she began the college audition process. 

With the guidance of mentors Luke Jorgensen, Michael Towers, and her wonderful mother, she earned a scholarship and began studying Musical Theatre at Drake University. Christine Fortner-Blanner, her voice teacher, helped her develop her uniquely warm, simultaneously bright sound, and Karla Kash, the head of her MT department, showered her with individual coaching time, Laban technique, Shakespeare, and many other tools - all of which landed her an internship at Playhouse on the Square in Memphis, TN. Excited for a new adventure, Sarah moved there as soon as she graduated with her BFA in Musical Theatre in May of 2011. Her time at Playhouse on the Square was pretty much another four year education crammed into thirteen months. She learned just how specific she needed to be both physically and vocally, developing characters that ranged from temptress to buffoon - from wide eyed adolescent to her very first pants role. She even somehow had time to fall in love with puppetry. By the end of her internship, she was ready to move to Chicago and try to make it in what seemed like a terrifying/exciting industry. 

During her four years in the Windy City, Sarah worked consistently with multiple theatre companies. She became an artistic associate for Underscore Theatre, with whom she became a seasoned role-originator in multiple new musicals. She also performed year-round in cabarets, musical murder mysteries, corporate events and as a Christmas caroler during the holiday season with the Chicago Cabaret Project. She created two solo cabarets, and took on her largest role ever - Charity in Sweet Charity - with MadKap Productions. She booked commercial and print work through her two talent agencies,, Ambassador Talent and Planet Earth Talent.

In 2016, Sarah decided she was ready to travel the country for her passion again, in a search for higher quality, higher budget productions that would offer her her first EMC points. From May of 2016 to August of 2017, Sarah accrued an impressive 39 points, playing such roles as Dyanne in Million Dollar Quartet, Rizzo in Grease, and Cindy Lou in The Winter Wonderettes at the Old Creamery Theatre in the Amana Colonies, Iowa; Bella in Lost in Yonkers, Louise in Gypsy, and Evelyn Nesbit in Ragtime at Great Plains Theatre in Abilene, Kansas; and Casey in First Date at Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati.

With all these EMC points, Sarah realized it was time to move to the musical theatre capitol of the world: New York City, baby!!! And the adventure there is just beginning. The first New York gig she landed is to reprise the role of Dyanne in Million Dollar Quartet at the Suffolk Theatre on Long Island. The rest is on the near horizon!

People often ask why anyone would choose this crazy, free-lance, constantly-looking-for-the-next-job lifestyle - to which Sarah responds, "Anyone who loved something this much would do it. Some people lack that passion; I'm not one of them."

Education and Training

Voice:

Sarah's vocal training started at the age of 14 at the Indian Hill School of Music in Littleton, Massachusetts. Her teacher, Charlotte Russell, taught the Jo Estill Voice Training System, a method focused on compulsory figures that enable a singer to healthily imitate and create many different sounds and styles including "sob," "opera," "belt," "twang," "falsetto," and "speech quality." The Jo Estill System has no aesthetic bias and is very much focused on creating a healthy, versatile sound. Sarah then moved on to study classically with Christine Fortner-Blanner at Drake University, where she also took a Vocal Pedagogy class with Leanne Freeman Miller. After working in two completely different settings, and learning from teachers on both sides of a grand spectrum of opinion on vocal training, she has developed a very well rounded knowledge of vocal technique. The versatility she has gained has shown itself in the very wide range of roles she has had the opportunity to play in musical theatre.

Acting:

After taking two acting classes in Stanislavski from Michael Towers at her highschool, Westford Academy, and receiving monologue coaching from Amy Babcock, Sarah trained as an actor for four years at Drake University. Her teachers included Karla Kash, Clive Elliott, Deena Conley and Michael Rothmayer. Her training in voice includes the methods of Roy Hart, I.P.A. and scansion, and in movement Laban, body centers, Michael Chekhov Pyschological Gesture, and yoga. She studied Stanislavski, Meisner, and G.O.T.E, as well as script analysis (David Ball's Backwards and Forwards), Shakespeare, the History of Musical Theatre, two years of Theatre History, two directing courses, four years of Acting for Musical Theatre, and a Readings in Theatre course. She graduated cum laude with a BFA in Musical Theatre in May of 2011.

Dance:

Sarah started taking dance classes at the age of four. She studied ballet for 8 years jazz for 10, tap for 3, musical theatre dance styles for 3, and modern for 1 at such schools as Acton Boxborough School of Ballet, Dance New England (Sarah Beth Smith), Tah-Dah school of dance, Acton Boxborough Dance Center, and with Paula McArthur at Drake University.

Music:

Sarah began her training as a musician at a very early age. She started taking piano lessons at the age of 7 and studied for three years, and then studied flute for four. This gave her a very solid understanding of music theory and sight reading, a skill she honed by being in the Honors Choir of her high school, Westford Academy, and taking music theory classes all throughout high school as well as in college.