Sarah, the founder of the micro-epic theatre company Rebel Haunt, has a special ability—she can find the story in anything.

“Everything is a story. There are everywhere,” Sarah says.

Her ability to find stories where others just see places or people is somewhat of a family inheritance. Passed down from her beloved grandma, whom Sarah affectionately calls Gran, her grandma used her work as a visual artist and tales of their family history to teach Sarah how to open herself up to the stories around her. She guided Sarah to see past the place or person in front of her and discover their unique narratives.

“I think the thing for me was having those doors open for me. And my eyes and all my senses open to the world of stories,” Sarah recalls of her time with her Gran.

With her eyes and senses open, Sarah found her gift of story in live theatre. Her love for the performing arts is yet another family legacy passed down to Sarah, this time from her dad, a former Port Moody theatre teacher. Opting for site-specific theatre, Sarah transforms everyday locations into settings for her plays to unfold. Often set outside, her audience (adults, children, dogs, unaware passersby-ers) is invited to quite literally follow the characters on their journeys and become part of the story.

Her first play, Hometown, had her audience follow a young woman as she wanders through her hometown trying to remember the stability and safety her home brings her. A feeling the protagonist wants to hold close as she finds herself on the verge of moving away from the people and places she has known her entire life.

In many ways, Sarah’s debut play is a homage to her two young daughters, representing her aspirations for them. “As a mother, I want to create that kind of stability for my children,” she explains. ”I want them to grow up in a place and have a connection to the community.” Having grown up with little stability in her own life, Sarah used Hometown to explore what it could be like to have a constant community you could rely on.

The common theme across all her plays? They all study the human existence, particularly loss and how to move forward. “I feel, as humans, we are always having to do that,” she says, reflectively. “There’s always something we’ll have to let go of.”

So when Sarah lost her dear Gran, she turned to the very thing her grandmother had gifted her throughout her life—stories. Initially worried that she would lose the storytelling part of herself with the loss of the woman who helped nurture it, she discovered the opposite. “[Storytelling] is like a body memory,” she explains. “Where I can step into myself and that’s a place I know. It’s a shared place in my body where I can be with my Gran.”

Stories have always been a family tradition. And one that Sarah hopes to continue with her daughters. She knows the profound effect they have had on her life, and it is something she wants her daughters to know. Sarah wants to give them the ultimate gift, a safe place within themselves that will connect them to her even when she’s not around—the same way stories bring Sarah to her Gran.