Sarah Ralfs studied literature and drama at the Freie Universität Berlin between 2004 and 2009. In 2009, she worked as an intern with director Andreas Kriegenburg during his staging of "Der Prinz von Homburg" at the Deutsche Theater in Berlin. The same year, she received a fellowship for the international post-graduate class "InterArt", where she is currently doing research on her Ph.D. project titled "Ästhetik des kollektiven Selbst". As an actress, Ralfs appeared in Max Linz' experimental short "Die Finanzen des Großherzogs Radikant Film", and later also played the lead in his feature-length debut "Ich will mich nicht künstlich aufregen" ("Asta Upset").

However, Ralfs' main field of activity remained science and teaching: in 2015 she became a research assistant at the Institute for Theater Studies at Freie Universität Berlin. In 2016, she completed her doctorate there with the thesis “Theatralität der Existenz. Ethik und Ästhetik bei Christoph Schlingensief”.

Once again under the direction of Max Linz, she took on a leading role in "Weitermachen Sanssouci" ("Music and Apocalypse", 2019), a satire about the transformation of university operations into a turbo-capitalist research machinery.