Sara Pagluica is an Associate Director of Production at Audible, helping to cast, direct, and edit Originals with our Studios team. She was recently nominated for a SOVAS (Society of Voice Arts and Sciences) Award for Best Director of an Audiobook, for the multicast Audible Original Maybe This Time, by Cara Bastone—Sara has produced several of Cara’s popular audiobooks—and has worked with notable talent like Noah Reid (Schitts Creek), Mae Whitman (Arrested Development), musican Rick Springfield, Tessa Thompson, and more.

So how does someone find their way to such a cool and creative role? Sara came to it from a place of music. A classical pianist, she chose William Paterson University, in New Jersey, for its major in music management. Then, “two weeks into it, I realized I’m not a businessperson, and engineering sounded better.” After graduation, she worked in-house doing post-production, editing audiobooks for a publisher, then went freelance for several years. Audible was among her clients, and when the opportunity arose in October 2017 to join Audible Studios full-time as one of our top editors, she jumped at the chance. In a short span of time, she worked as an editor and engineer on a number of Audible Originals, like Darrell Hammond’s (Saturday Night Live) God, If You’re Not Up There, I’m F*cked, John Lithgow’s Stories by Heart, and Tony Award-winner Dennis Kelly’s Girls & Boys, starring Carey Mulligan.

Editing audiobooks for ten years had given Sara a sense of best practices in terms of performances, which she knew she could parlay into direction. Soon after starting at Audible, Sara told her manager that she was interested in directing as well. He encouraged her to take the reins on a series of kids’ audiobooks, The Hidden Files of Joey Pigza, from Jack Gantos, and she proved such a natural, that she followed it up by directing and producing Stan Lee’s Alliances series. Recently she reunited with one of the series’ stars, Wil Wheaton, to direct him in the new Audible exclusive title, When the Moon Hits Your Eye, a sci-fi comedy by John Scalzi.

“I’ve always been someone who can be literally obsessed with a line reading,” Sara says. “I think that has influenced my wanting to be a director, helping to bring out those performances.” She also draws much of her directing inspiration from places other than audiobooks. “I listen to a lot of rewatch podcasts, the kind that are hosted by the actors of the shows. Talking about the art of acting, they might mention what has worked for them when being directed, or what hasn’t worked, and I’ll try to take what I learn from them into my directing.”

Of course, it could be said that great directing starts with great casting. Sometimes the perfect narrator comes to her as she’s reading a script. “If I can easily hear their voice in my head, then I feel like they’re a good choice,” says Sara. Often, it’s the author who ultimately gets to choose the narrator for their title, so Sara will send a few narrators for them to decide between. “Sometimes I think of three people who would all be so perfect for it, so I’m grateful the author has to be the one to choose!” No matter what, though, Sara prioritizes respect for the characters’ identities when casting; for instance, she will cast an Afro-Latina character with an Afro-Latina, not just Latina, performer. “It was really important to me to have both of those identities represented, so that it was authentic.”

As opposed to directing for a visual medium like stage or screen, Sara is assessing qualities conveyed only by voice: emotional subtext, mood, pacing and consistency. For instance, making sure the meaning behind the words come through in their performances, and that  characters’ voices and accents are maintained throughout the whole production, while also being different enough from each other.

Sara offers deeply useful tips for performers that will help the engineers make the highest-quality recording: don’t wear noisy material or jewelry, as the sounds will be captured by audio, and don’t record hungry, or after a big meal, otherwise the audio will pick up stomach noises (if all else fails, holding a pillow helps mute them). “For clicky sort of mouth noises,” she adds, “green apple—specifically green—clears it away.” She’s also seen narrators suck on sour candy to reduce those. Otherwise, the engineers have to work to cut and smooth those sounds out.

Sara still plays piano—Chopin is her favorite—and she’s a talented oil painter, as well, which she does on weekends. Yoga is also an important part of Sara’s life; she’s been practicing for more than 10 years, and completed her teacher training in 2020. She teaches three times a week at a couple of different studios.

Recently, Sara helped to produce bestselling author and podcaster Mel Robbins’ Let Them Theory, overseeing the schedule to be sure every element was delivered by our third-party collaborators and that they had all the Audible support they needed. The core theme of the title, that we need to let go of the people and outcomes we can’t control in order to make space for the things we can, is something that resonates with her. “There are yoga teachings that are really similar, such as practicing non-attachment to what you can’t control. Anything that helps you practice kindness toward yourself.”