About the founder
Sara Bernstein.
Founder & Artistic Director, Storybook Entertainment.
Sara Bernstein did not start in the party industry. She started on the stage.
Trained at Northwestern University in musical production and direction, Sara brought that training to Arizona, spending more than a decade directing musicals across the Phoenix metropolitan area. Sara also served for five years as Education Manager for the Arizona Theatre Company.
Storybook came out of that work, and Sara founded it in 2014. Event entertainment is more than a costume; she believes it is a performance, and a performance has to be cast, directed, and produced by someone who has done all three.
Sara is a multi-time Arizoni Award-winning director. She applies the same attention to a backyard birthday as she does to a professional playbill.
Storybook Entertainment is a theatrical production house in Scottsdale, Arizona, founded in 2014 by Sara Bernstein. She trained at Northwestern University in musical production and direction, has directed musicals across the Phoenix metro for over a decade, and has won multiple Arizoni Awards. She is still a working stage actor.
Before Storybook
Trained in the theater.
Sara earned a Bachelor of Music in Musical Production and Direction from Northwestern University. It is a degree in how a show actually gets made: casting, pacing, staging, and running a rehearsal room well enough that the problems are solved before opening night.
She brought that training to Arizona and has spent more than a decade directing musicals across the Phoenix metropolitan area. For five of those years she was Education Manager at the Arizona Theatre Company, teaching the craft to other people.
Her direction has won multiple Arizoni Awards, including her work on Les Misérables and I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change. One is a large-cast tragedy, the other a small-cast comedy, which is about as much range as musical theater offers.
A celebration needs the same skill set. Someone has to pick the right performer, decide how the day is paced, and work out the problems in advance. At Storybook, that person is Sara.
- Training
- Northwestern University, Musical Production & Direction
- Direction
- A decade directing musicals across the Phoenix metro
- Theater
- Five years as Education Manager, Arizona Theatre Company
- Recognition
- Multiple-time Arizoni Award winner
Still performing
She still gets cast.
Sara is a working stage actor, not a retired one. She auditions, she gets cast, and she is matter-of-fact about why: she can sing, she can dance, and she can act. She also still takes voice lessons, from the resident music director at the largest professional theater in Phoenix.
At the community theater where she performs she has played leads, and she is just as happy in the ensemble. “Put me in the ensemble, I don’t care,” is how she puts it.
In 2016 she wrote original lyrics for a company music video and produced the recording herself, with seven singers on it.
It matters to your celebration because the person casting your character is still being cast herself. She knows what makes a performance land, and she is picky about her own time. If she is giving up an evening, she wants it to be for good work. She holds the people she hires to the same standard.
How a production runs
What a director's eye changes on the day.
The cast arrives half an hour before your first guest. That time is not for us. It means nobody watches a performer pull up, change, or set a table, and it means your child gets more time with the character once things are underway.
It also gives us room when something goes wrong. Balloon work once came off the truck oxidized and popping. Arizona does that to latex after half an hour in a hot vehicle, and Phoenix is past a hundred degrees by a mid-June morning. Because the team was already on site with hours in hand, there was time to rebuild the whole thing. Ninety minutes later it was standing at full standard, and that is the version the client saw.
That is what you are paying for: we arrive, we arrive on time, and no character ever looks as though she rolled out of bed. When something goes wrong we fix it.
Sara describes it as selling peace of mind. The point of all that preparation is that you get to be a guest at your own event.
The work
Backyards, ballrooms, and the calendar.
Our performers are working theater people, and they prepare the way theater people prepare: character study, dance and acting classes, and rehearsal for the performances that are staged. Many are independent contractors who own their wardrobe and their kit. The roster stays open on purpose: if a celebration needs someone Sara does not already have, she goes and finds the right person rather than sending the closest match.
That covers a lot of rooms: we produce around 350 events a year. Storybook has worked with The Phoenician, PayPal, the Phoenix Symphony, Ralph Lauren, the City of Scottsdale, Raising Cane's, and Yelp.
The repeat bookings say more than any of it. One client books us seventeen times a year. A hotel books fourteen Santa dates a season and asks for the same performer every time. A family in Desert Ridge has been booking Storybook for more than eight years.
Christmas rebooking opens after Memorial Day, and the request is almost always the same: same Santa, same date, same hour. Families are not asking for a character. They are asking for the performer their children already know.
What truly sets Sara apart is her professionalism, attention to detail, and the incredible talent of her performers.
Work with Sara
Let's begin your story.
Tell us about your celebration and we will shape a production around it.
or call · (480) 254-3994