For a New ‘Empire Records,’ Zoe Sarnak Set Out to Write a ’90s Anthem

As a teenager in New Jersey, the composer and lyricist Zoe Sarnak was a star soccer player, earning her place in the Princeton High School Athletic Hall of Fame. Her position? “Center mid,” she said in a recent interview. “The one who runs the most.”

In addition to displaying endurance, the center midfielder plays a crucial role in coordinating defense and attack, and controlling the game’s tempo. Experience that must have come in handy this year, when Sarnak, now 37, will have had multiple productions at prestigious institutions around the country.

In May, Berkeley Repertory Theater premiered “Galileo,” a musical with a score by Sarnak and the composer Michael Weiner, in which science and religion duke it out. A few days later, a retooled version of “The Lonely Few,” a heated love story between two rockers, opened at MCC in New York.

Now Sarnak is back in her hometown, Princeton, with “Empire Records: The Musical,” an adaptation of the 1995 grunge-adjacent teen film that begins previews at the McCarter theater on Sept. 6.

“Maybe it’s from growing up playing sports and feeling like there’s something really gratifying about saying, ‘I can just run that extra wind sprint, I know I have it in me,’” she said during one of three conversations we shared over the summer — each at a different location attached to a different project.