Leadership & Staff

Sarah Rasmussen started her first theater company at 14 in her hometown of Sisseton, South Dakota, after seeing a Garland Wright production. Since then she's gone on to a directing, producing, and teaching career with critical acclaim for inventive storytelling and a generous exchange between actor and audience.  Rasmussen is the former Artistic Director of the Jungle Theater in Minneapolis, MN where she commissioned, directed, and produced new work.  She was recently named Star Tribune's Artist of the Year and is an inaugural recipient of the BOLD Leadership Circle grant.  Directing credits include Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the Guthrie, Dallas Theater Center, Actors Theater of Louisville and La Jolla Playhouse.  Awards include MN Theater Award for The Wolves, Princess Grace, an Ivey Award for Overall Excellence, Drama League and Fulbright fellowships.  New work development with Playwrights’ Center, The O’Neill, The Lark, and many others.  Alum of the Women’s Project, SoHo Rep., and Lincoln Center Directing Labs.   She was formerly the Resident Director for Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Black Swan Lab new work development program and Head of MFA Directing at the University of Texas at Austin.  MFA from the University of California, San Diego.  BA in English and Theater from St. Olaf College.

Michael is in his first season at McCarter. For the last nine years, he was the Managing Director of La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego where he helped develop and produce new work by Ayad Akhtar, Trey Anastasio, Amanda Green, Kirsten Greenidge, Quiara Alegría Hudes, John Leguizamo, Basil Twist, Doug Wright, and The Flaming Lips. During his tenure, the Playhouse was awarded multi-million dollar grants from the NEA and the Wallace and Irvine Foundations to accelerate experiments meant to develop multi-ethnic projects, expand opportunities for family engagement and build the capacity to sustain community arts programs in off-site locations. Previously, Mike was Co-Founder and Executive Director of Drama Dept., a New York non-profit theater collective, where for fourteen years he produced new works by the likes of Douglas Carter Beane, Warren Leight, Isaac Mizrahi, Paul Rudnick, and David & Amy Sedaris. His early work included stints in Atlantic City, at the Kennedy Center and with the National Dance Institute’s Trenton residency. He is also the Assistant Coach for the U13 Ironmen FC. Follow him on Twitter @MrMikeRosenberg.

William W. Lockwood, Jr. has been responsible for McCarter’s special programs for almost half a century and is currently the senior arts presenter in the United States in terms of continuous service. As Special Programming Director, his association with McCarter goes back even more than 50 years to the days when he produced his first events at the venue while a Princeton undergraduate. Since 1963, he has brought thousands of world-renowned and emerging artists in every genre to McCarter audiences—music (both classical and pop), dance, jazz, variety, family, cabaret, and even film. Mr. Lockwood is McCarter’s unofficial historian and the author of McCarter Theatre: 1930-2005, a memoir published at the time of the building’s 75th anniversary in 2005. From 1966 to l993, he served as Programming Director for Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, a tenure during which he helped create the Great Performers Series and the Mostly Mozart Festival (which he named), programs that both continue to this day. In l997, he helped inaugurate the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark (NJPAC) as its Principal Programming Associate, a title he continues to hold in addition to that at McCarter. He also served in the same capacity as the chief programming officer for the first two seasons of the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia. Mr. Lockwood continues to curate an annual film series for the Priceton Adult School entitled “Second Chance Cinema,” and has served for 40 years as the Graduate Treasurer and Resident Faculty Advisor to the Princeton Triangle Club, of which he is a Trustee Emeritus.