Sarah Berry Pierce

Sarah Berry Pierce is a PhD student in Theatre and Performance studies at Tufts University. She is a theater director and scholar whose work primarily focuses on girlhood, queerness, and fatness. Originally from Mississippi, Sarah Berry examines the ways theatricality and status quo conceptions have shaped the unique subjectivity, lived experiences, and social perceptions of fat girls. She is also interested in exploring representations of fatness on the stage and screen and has presented her work on historical fat theatrical performances at the American Society for Theatre Research, UCLA, and more. She received her BA from Vassar College in May of 2022 with Honors in Women’s Studies and Drama and completed her MA in Performance Studies at NYU Tisch School of the Arts in 2023. Sarah Berry hopes to use her experiences as a queer, fat girl raised in the South to reorient the ways in which fat performance is made, studied, and experienced.