Lois Smith

[On Rick On Theater, I’ve said of actress Lois Smith (b. 1930), whom I’ve seen on stage a number of times in different kinds of roles (not to mention several TV and film performances), that she’s “truly one of this country’s top performers” and that her “prominence . . . comes from her absolute command of any role she plays, irrespective of the quality of the rest of the production.”  In a 2011 report on this blog, I made the definitive statement, “I don’t think Smith can deliver anything less than a credible and warm performance.”  I’m doubling down on that assessment. 

[I met Smith briefly after a performance—playing opposite her was David Margulies, a former teacher of mine, so I waited by the stage door to say hello to him—and I got to tell Smith how much I liked her work.  Something else I wrote in a ROT report: “I think Lois Smith is an honest-to-God living national treasure.”

[Posts on ROT that feature commentary on Lois Smith are: “The Illusion” (1 July 2011), “Heartless” (10 September 2012), “The Trip to Bountiful (2005)” (25 May 2013), and “John” (1 September 2015).]

“LOIS SMITH AND THE WORK THAT ENDURES”
by Lyndsey Bourne

[The following transcript was slugged “Interview” and was posted on the American Theatre website on 23 December 2025; it didn’t appear in the magazine’s print edition.]

The 95-year-old actor reflects on her rich and rewarding stage career, and the life it drew from and made for her.

For more than 70 years, Lois Smith has been delivering performances that have the power to remind an audience what a night at the theatre is for, and what a play can do. Across stage and screen, Smith has built a body of work remarkable not just for its longevity but for its consistency of purpose. She gravitates toward writing that unsettles and deepens, that asks something of her, and of her audiences. She has consistently met that demand with a blend of rigor and curiosity that has made her a touchstone for several generations of artists.

In September, I was invited to an early screening of the upcoming film The Steel Harp [independent comedy directed by Alex Thompson and Kelly O’Sullivan and written by O’Sullivan; Ley Line Entertainment, Fusion Entertainment, release date to be announced], in which Smith stars. She anchors the film with steadiness and grace, with the same searching, steely gaze and emotional precision that has defined her stage work for more than seven decades.

When we spoke a few weeks after her 95th birthday [3 November 2025], our conversation moved from her earliest days on Broadway [Time Out for Ginger (1952) by Ronald Alexander, The Wisteria Trees (1955) by Joshua Logan, The Young and Beautiful (1955) by Sally Benson] through the landmark productions that shaped her career, to the rhythms of her life now. In person she is warm and generous—as well as very tough, practical, and discerning. She brings to every exchange a level of care, thought, and attention that feels increasingly rare for a person of any age. At 95, she’s reflective without nostalgia, clear-eyed about the industry’s changes, and devoted to the communal spark that makes theatre worth returning to.

In the time since we spoke, it is the reverence for her craft, the integrity she exudes, that has stayed with me most. That and the indelible sound of her deep, endearing laugh.

The following is an edited transcript of our conversation.

LYNDSEY BOURNE: I’ve been having so much fun revisiting some of your work. I watched an archival recording of Buried Child [Broadway, 1996; by Sam Shepard; Nominee for 1996 Tony for Best Featured Actress in a Play] earlier this week, and The Trip to Bountiful [Off-Broadway, 2005; by Horton Foote; 2006 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Lead Actress, 2006 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Play, 2006 Obie Award for Best Performance, 2006 Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Actress in a Play, and Nominee for 2006 Drama League Award for Distinguished Performance]. 

LOIS SMITH: I think those are two of my best works.

In Buried Child, especially, the final reveal in the third act—when we learn about the baby as you’re going up the stairs, gripping the side of the banister with both hands and your back to the audience—it’s devastating. It’s rare to be so moved by back acting.

Discovering that was very specific and very real. Gary Sinise [b. 1955], who directed it, was so fierce, holding everybody so tight, we’d go crazy. [The production transferred from Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company.] Afterwards, I felt if he hadn’t done that, we never would have gotten to where we got. I felt free because we were so grounded. And he was delighted at the things that came forth.

The Trip to Bountiful too. Carrie Watts is such a physically and emotionally demanding role. I kept thinking, for an old play, it feels very contemporary. 

Oh gosh, yes. What a beautiful play. Horton [Foote (1916-2009)] was with us all the time, and he loves actors—he was a delight. He’d been working on that play for 50 years. In ’53 it was on television and Broadway the same year. Then, of course, he adapted it for the film [1986]. The original had something like five huge sets and three acts. In 2005, when we did it at the Signature [Theatre Company; Off Broadway company in New York City], Harris Yulin [1937-2025], the director, proposed we cut it down. We did it in 90 minutes without stopping. Horton was all for it—he made it happen. It was so exciting. 

I’d love to go back to the very beginning of your career. You moved to New York in 1952, is that right? Were you scared, coming here on your own, all the way across the country for those first few months? [Smith was born in Topeka, Kansas, but her family had moved to Seattle, Washington, around 1941.]

No, I wasn’t scared. I was excited.

You were ready to start your life.

New York seemed like the place for me. I was at the University of Washington in the Drama Department. There were two theatres on campus performing plays year-round with student casts. Every play ran for six-week runs, six nights a week, to a paid audience. It was like being in a stock company or something—a kind of theatre training that was beyond classwork.

We drove from Seattle to New York in a little old Ford that boiled over during the day, so we drove at night. It was really crazy.

What were you hoping for when you moved here? Were you thinking long-term about your career, about the kind of life you wanted to build?

I don’t think I had that kind of thought. I wanted to work—and I was lucky. When my husband [Wesley D. Smith (1930-2018); m. 1948, div. 1970] and I first came, he was going to Harvard. We stayed a month in a little rented room. I worked all night sorting checks in a bank on Wall Street; he had a filing job. I looked for acting work during the day.

That summer, I got my first job, a play on Broadway called Time Out for Ginger; Melvyn Douglas [1901-81] played my father. Suddenly I had a Broadway salary. In those days it was nothing like what it is now, of course, but it was more money than I’d ever made in one day. I came here hoping to work and I lucked out. There was a lot of theatre going on then. Off-Broadway didn’t yet exist, but there were a lot of plays on Broadway, there were showcases, television dramas—I don’t mean series but plays filmed live for television. That’s how I got started in television.

[For some comments on theater on television, see my post “Cinderella: Impossible Things Are Happening (CBS-TV, 31 March 1957)” (25 April 2013).

[Off-Broadway was just getting started at the beginning of the 1950s. It’s first real success was the 1952 revival of Tennessee Williams’s (1911-83) Summer and Smoke directed by José Quintero (1924-99) at the Circle in the Square Theater in Greenwich Village.  The play had failed on Broadway in 1948, but ran in the Village for over 100 performances—and audiences and the press took notice, helping establish Off-Broadway as a legitimate New York theater venue.

[Summer and Smoke’s success was followed by the first musical success of Off-Broadway, the 95-performance run of Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) and Kurt Weill’s (1900-50) Threepenny Opera (which had also flopped on Broadway) in 1954, the same year that the Village Voice inaugurated the Obie Awards to recognize excellence in the new theatrical venue.]

I don’t want to presume, but it must have been difficult in the 1950s to be a woman and an actor, and then also a mother. [Lois and Wesley had a daughter in 1958.] What was it like for you?

Well, you know, it’s me, all those years, all those 70 years. So it’s hard to say. I was lucky in that there was a lot of work. And sometimes, like right now, there isn’t. By the time I’d been here, I think, two years, I had done some television work and a film, which meant I could make a living—which you can’t do in the theatre, or almost can’t.

Was it steady work?

Oh, never. It’s not steady.

Are there roles you feel most connected to? Which plays still stick with you the most?

It’s interesting, you immediately picked two of them: The Trip to Bountiful, Buried Child. Also The Grapes of Wrath [Broadway, 1990; Book adapted by Frank Galati from the novel by John Steinbeck; from Steppenwolf; 1990 Tony Nominee for Best Featured Actress in a Play]. I think they were my best work. They were examples of what it is when it’s good—when it’s the real thing. When people are working together with skill and trust and love. So many things have to come together. And in those cases, they did. You can’t do it alone. Though as a playwright, you probably feel more than others that you are alone, at least for a good part of the process.

Just the first half, really. I love being in rehearsal. I’m just a playwright so I can get to the rehearsal room, you know?

It’s the best place.

Do you feel your approach to a rehearsal process changes with each role, with every play, whether it’s a new play or a classic?

It’s always different. I mean, I’m speaking now ideally and about my best experiences. Of course, it’s not always wonderful. It’s very hard. And it hasn’t always worked beautifully, which has to do with everything: the play, the actors, the director. This is a slightly different subject, but when Glynis Johns [1923-2024; British actress and singer] died this year, I read an obituary where she said, “I think my best thinking is in the theatre.” That’s exactly how I feel.

[Smith was probably referring to Johns’s remark quoted in her New York Times obituary of 6 January 2024 (Johns died the year before Smith’s interview for AT): “Acting is my highest form of intelligence, the time when I use the best part of my brain” (Anita Gates, “Glynis Johns, 100, Dies; ‘Mary Poppins’ Actress And Tony Award Winner”; online, the notice was entitled “Glynis Johns, Tony Winner for ‘A Little Night Music,’ Dies at 100,” posted on 4 January, the day of the actress’s death.)

Looking back, was there a decade in theatre that feels most meaningful to you?

My first decade. That excitement—everything was new. The fact that I got work quickly and in all three mediums meant that I could keep working. In ’55 I did a Broadway play, The Young and Beautiful; Sally Benson [1897-1972] wrote it based on F. Scott Fitzgerald [1896-1940] stories. That was very early in my career—fun. By then we were living in Princeton [New Jersey]; my husband was a classicist and taught at Princeton. My daughter was born there in ’58. I had various jobs during that time, Broadway plays. Sometimes they would close quickly.

[In addition to the stage work Smith did in the ’50s, she did many TV shows, a number of them episodes of anthology series, a popular format of the era in which each episode presents a different story and a different set of characters (Kraft Television Theatre [1953], Studio One [1954], Modern Romances [1955]).  She also made her film début in East of Eden in 1955 (see a brief anecdote about Smith and this film in my report on Heartless (referenced in the introduction above).]

Did your daughter come with you when you worked, when you traveled for jobs?

When she was a little baby, I remember a job when I was carrying her in a handbag practically, and my mother from Seattle came down to L.A. and babysat while I was doing a television show there. That happened more than once. Then in the ’60s, we lived in Philadelphia; my husband’s next job was at Penn [University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia]. I worked for Theatre of the Living Arts. André Gregory [b. 1934] was artistic director.

You’ve mentioned a few directors already—Gary Sinise, Harris Yulin—and how much their approaches shaped those productions. Are there other directors or collaborators you’ve especially loved working with—people who really understood you or lifted you up in the work?

Frank Galati [1943-2023], certainly. I first worked with him in The Grapes of Wrath at Steppenwolf. I think we did three more things together.

[Smith was also directed by Galati in The Royal Family by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber (1990) and Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children (2001); in 2009, Smith performed in William Shakespeare’s (1564-1616) The Tempest in a cast that also included Galati, under the direction of Tina Landau (b. 1962). All three of these productions were performed at Steppenwolf in Chicago; none traveled to New York City as The Grapes of Wrath and Buried Child did.]

What was it about him?

His presence. His manner of working. Who he was. I remember when we did The Grapes of Wrath in ’88, he hadn’t been a member of the company very long. He was a phenomenon in Chicago, and they were very pleased that they lured him to come and be a member at Steppenwolf. This was a great big cast; everyone was working at the top of their game. They had gotten my name from asking around because they didn’t have a Ma Joad in the company. Anyway, it was a huge production. Everybody felt a lot of agency; nobody was shy. It was my first experience with him and with the company. It was really falling in love.

I’m also thinking about how important and meaningful working with Irene Lewis [b. 1945] has been to me.

Tell me about her.

She was artistic director at Baltimore Center Stage [1991-2011]. I first met her when she cast me in Escape From Happiness by George Walker [1993]. Then she asked what I’d like to do. I mentioned [George Bernard] Shaw [1856-1950] and The Cherry Orchard [Anton Chekhov (1860-1904)]. She directed me in Mrs. Warren’s Profession [1999] and then as Ranevskaya [1994].

She used all of the allotted rehearsal time—and used it well. I find this less and less the norm. There is no substitute for what happens during rehearsal. There is no substitute for the experience and growth of the production of a play during the rehearsal hours together. She exemplified an understanding and practice of the art of rehearsal. My times of working with her were probably in the 1990s.

[I wholeheartedly share Smith's feelings about rehearsals, and I suspect most stage actors would also. I loved rehearsing. Performances are the reward for the work; they’re the endorphin shot at the end of weeks of effort. But the rehearsals are where the actor's creativity happens, it’s where the adrenaline is generated. Rehearsing is how the actor contributes the art of theater; it’s how we discover what the playwright wrought and what the director conceives. Rehearsals are where the collaboration of the “collaborative art” takes place; they’re where the juices flow. Smith is spot on; ask any actor!]

At what point did you move back to New York?

It was the beginning of the ’70s, when we were living in Philadelphia, and my daughter and I moved back to New York. That was really kind of scary.

You were a single mom, is that right? How did you manage that?

One of the first things I did coming back to New York was a Joyce Carol Oates [b. 1938] play, Sunday Dinner [1970]. Curt Dempster [1935-2007] directed it; this was right around the time he started EST [Ensemble Studio Theatre, Dempster’s repertory and developmental company]. Then, fairly early on, I got a job in a soap opera. And then another. [Among others, Smith appeared in 708 episodes of Somerset in 1972-74 and 247 episodes of The Doctors in 1977-79.] For a long time, I had several running jobs in soap operas—hardly what I would most love to do—but my goodness, Monday to Friday, daytime hours! Amazing. That was a real break, you know? Not in my sense of myself as an actor, but as an actor who was working, which was very important. I was making enough money to comfortably live on. That was how I managed as a single mom in those early years, in her school years.

[This was a common wish among New York-based actors just starting their careers.  Getting a soap opera role (or a commercial gig), could subsidize one's stage work for a few months.  Snagging a recurring character rather than a member of the regular cast, because that meant regular work a few days or weeks at time, then being laid off for some time before the character returns to the plot, gave the actor time to audition or perform in a stage show with money in the bank. Booking a commercial, especially getting cast as a character appearing in a series of ads, worked the same way.  Soaps and commercials paid well, and it was daytime work, as Smith points out.  Some soap opera and commercial actors were known to do their TV work during the day, and tread the boards at night. Needless to say, I suppose, it takes luck and persistence to get that kind of set-up--but it was an almost ubiquitous ambition.]

How important have your friendships in the theatre been—to sustaining your career, your resilience, to moving through all these decades?

Amazingly important. Harold Clurman [1901-80] was another director I loved and a very good friend. I first worked with him in Tennessee Williams’s Orpheus Descending [Broadway, 1957], probably. Harold introduced me to Stella Adler [1901-92; actress and acting teacher] and her daughter, Ellen, who he had really raised with Stella from the time she was with the Group Theatre through all its years. Ellen and I both had daughters, born, I think, a day apart.

[Stella Adler, aside from being a renowned actor in her own right—she was a founding member of the famous Group Theatre (1931-41) with Clurman, Lee Strasburg (1901-82), and Cheryl Crawford (1902-86)---was one of the United States’ most esteemed acting teachers and interpreters of Method acting and the system of actor training conceived by Konstantin Stanislavsky (1863-1938), on whose theories the Method was based (see “The Method – a Review” [12 March 2022] and “Bombast to Beckett” [13 January 2025], both by Kirk Woodward).

[Adler was born into an acting family, founded by her father, Jacob Adler (1855-1926), a star of the Yiddish theater (see my post “National Yiddish Theatre – Folksbiene” (23 and 26 August 2012). Her mother, Sara (1858-1953), was also a Yiddish theater actor, and so was her brother, Luther (1903-84), who became a prominent figure in films and the English-speaking stage.

[Stella Adler was married to Clurman, author of one of the most influential books about directing, On Directing (1974), from 1942-59, which includes the period when Smith was starting her career in New York.  Adler’s daughter, known as Ellen Adler (1927-2019), though her father was Stella’s first husband, Horace Eliascheff (1896-1944) and Ellen was married to clarinetist David Oppenheim (1922-2007). Ellen Adler was a painter, musical artist, and guardian of the Adler family name and legacy.]

What was your daughter’s relationship to you being a working actor? Did she ever talk about it with you? Was she thrilled by your job or was it just what Mom did?

I think she was interested. I remember when I was in the Theater of the Living Arts, she was in grade school, and it was the first time that my husband had brought her to see a play all the way through—a modern-day version of The Misanthrope [Molière (French; 1622-73)]. I must have been about 35, I’m guessing, something like that. [The production was staged in mid-1965, so Smith would have been just under 35 and her daughter would have been just over 7.] Afterwards she said, “Here you are, getting your gray hair, and you were so bouncy.” So that was my first review from my daughter. 

That’s so good—that’s my favorite review I’ve ever heard.

Isn’t that wonderful?

When you’re on a stage, what’s your favorite sound to hear from an audience?

Oh, gosh. You know, it could be silence. It could be laughter. As long as they’re listening.

I can think of a time an audience just went crazy for you: In Annie Baker’s [b. 1981] John [2015; see my report, referenced above in the introduction], when you came out to do that speech at the start of the second intermission.

Wasn’t that fun?

Amazing. Everyone’s just leaving and then you come out from behind that big red curtain and you start talking.

There were people afterwards, who were so mad they missed it. They didn’t know it was going to happen; they were already gone. 

I almost missed it. And then I heard your voice and ran back inside. That year, 2015, you also had Marjorie Prime [Jordan Harrison (b. 1977)]. 

It was a crazy year. We did Marjorie Prime at the Taper [Mark Taper Forum, Los Angeles, 2014; Playwrights Horizons, 2015] and then, not long after that, I did a play at Steppenwolf, which Frank Galati directed, called The Herd [by Rory Kinnear (b. 1978), 2015]. Then I came back to New York. I think that’s when I first read Lily Thorn[e]’s play, Peace for Mary Frances [2018], and then I went straight into John and then straight into the movie of Marjorie Prime [BB Film Productions, 2017], and then straight—truly, the next day after we finished shooting—right into the Playwrights Horizons production of Marjorie Prime. I don’t think I’d ever had so much good, interesting, exciting work pile up on top of each other. But it was horrible because my beloved, David Margulies [1937-2016], was sick and getting sicker and sicker. He died during all of that; it was awful. I didn’t even understand for a while afterwards how much in shock I was through parts of that year. It was . . . It was really awful. It was wonderful, but it was awful. It was just one of those . . . one of those things.

[David Margulies, whom I identified above as a teacher of mine (in the then-brand-new Master of Fine Arts program in theater at Rutgers in the mid-1970s), was Lois Smith’s romantic partner—something I didn’t know. Their relationship began around 1973, after each of their marriages had dissolved, and though it was often on and off, Smith said that they were “very strongly together” during the final years of Margulies’s life (Michael Schulman, “Lois Smith Refreshes Her Memory,” New Yorker 20 November 2017). Both actors had been active with the Ensemble Studio Theatre from its formative years—Curt Dempster founded the company in 1968—and performed there frequently. Margulies, who joined the executive board on 1973, also directed EST productions. Margulies died of cancer on 11 January 2016 at 78.]

It must have been overwhelming. And to have so much attention on you at that time, in your career . . . It really was a huge year for you.

Yeah, it was a huge year.

I think Marjorie Prime and John are two of the most important plays of the last 25 years. Certainly, two of the most memorable nights I’ve spent in the theatre. Do you still see a lot of theatre? I know I’ve spotted you in quite a few audiences.

After the pandemic, I sort of made a point of it. It’s one of the most important things I do. 

What do you look for in a play when you’re a member of the audience? What do you hope for when you go to the theatre?

I don’t know if I go with a hope; I think I go with a habit. Still, there’s that little happy feeling, a hopeful feeling, at the beginning, right before a play starts, being there together. What do you hope for?

I think I hope I’ll be surprised.

Yes, surprise is one of the best things, isn’t it? I agree. We need it.

What are you thinking about these days? How do you like to spend your time?

I love to read novels. That hasn’t been as true lately. When The Steel Harp became a reality, I kind of stopped reading. I just spent all my time on that script. I don’t think I’ve ever been a hasty person, but I’ve become much more of a slow mover than I used to be. Everything is slower, I think. I take too long to read the Times in the morning.

But what’s too long?

No, you’re right. It’s a morning ritual. David and I always used to read the Times together in the morning; I think that’s part of why I continue doing it. That’s how my day begins.

Now I’m organized around social dates, theatregoing dates: dinner with friends, theatre with friends. I’m 95. Many things are different. I’m not as strong. But I can still work, and with pleasure, thank God. I just had a television job that dropped in for a couple of days. There were things I couldn’t do physically, but it turned out to be okay. I love working. I really do.

What do you hope for the future of the theatre?

I haven’t thought a lot about that. It’s hard to think about the future of theatre without thinking about what kind of world it will exist in. I guess I would say that the things most precious to me—the interconnectedness of people and experience, thought and concern—that they be present in the work. I don’t think I have a clear vision or hope for the future, except that it be . . . rooted.

[Lyndsey Bourne (b. ca. 1992) is a Canadian writer, teacher, and doula (a woman who assists mothers during labor and after childbirth) working with The Doula Project.  She’s currently based in Brooklyn, New York.  Her plays include The Second Body (workshopped at La MaMa E.T.C., New York City, in 2020), Mabel’s Mine (still in workshop; reading in July 2025), and I Was Unbecoming Then (Canadian première: 2024).  She teaches playwriting at Playwrights Horizons Theater School (New York University Tisch School of the Arts).]

Immigrant Imaginations 1

 

[Immigrants and immigration has become a top-of-mind subject in recent years, especially so at this moment in time.  When I saw that the Theatre Communications Group’s quarterly magazine American Theatre entitled its Summer 2025 issue “Immigrant Imaginations,” I thought it would be useful and interesting to repost some of the articles on the topic on my blog. 

[The first one that struck me is a conversation among six playwrights working in the U.S. whose origins are all beyond our borders.  In the published discussion, the writers touch on several aspects of their work that have been affected by their change of venue, so to speak.  Some of that has to do with culture, some with language, and some, I was curious to read, has to do with time.  I won’t try to explain that last one; I’ll let you read it for yourself.

[The article ran in volume 41, issue 4 (Summer 2025), of AT.  It was also posted on the journal’s website on 29 July 2025.] 

“HERE, THERE, AND EVERYWHERE:
AN IMMIGRANT THEATREMAKERS ROUNDTABLE”

by Lyndsey Bourne 

Immigrant theatremakers working in the U.S. reflect on what they write 
and who they’re writing for.

“If we opened people up, we’d find landscapes.”

That’s an Agnès Varda quote I love. I think about it often. These past few months, I’ve been thinking about landscape and place, and how they are present in a play. How, for example, Cuba feels so present in María Irene Fornés’s work.

[Agnès Varda (1928-2019) was a Belgian-born French film director, screenwriter, and photographer. The quotation is from her 2008 autobiographical documentary film The Beaches of Agnès (Les plages d'Agnès; Ciné-tamaris and Arte France Cinéma; distributed by Les Films du Losange).

[María Irene Fornés (1930-2018) was a Cuban-American playwright, theater director, and teacher who worked in Off-Broadway and experimental theater venues in the last four decades of the twentieth century. See a report on Fornés’s play Drowning in “Signature Plays” (3 June 2016).]  

I’m a playwright, a Canadian with an O-1 visa. I’ve been living in New York for nearly 15 years. Even when the plays I write are set in the U.S., somehow I’m always writing Canada.

[According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the federal agency within the Department of Homeland Security that administers lawful immigration and naturalization, the O-1 visa is for the nonimmigrant individual

who possesses extraordinary ability in the sciences, arts, education, business, or athletics, or who has a demonstrated record of extraordinary achievement in the motion picture or television industry and have been recognized nationally or internationally for those achievements.

[There are two classifications of O-1 visas; the applicable one for this discussion is the second one (O-1B):

O-1A: individuals with an extraordinary ability in the sciences, education, business, or athletics (not including the arts, motion pictures or television industry)

O-1B: individuals with an extraordinary ability in the arts, or extraordinary achievement in motion picture or television industry

[There are also special visa classifications for those accompanying O-1 visa holders.  See the USCIS website for details.]

In early April over Zoom, I spoke with a group of international playwrights all living and making theatre in the U.S., writing stories and landscapes between places: Bazeed [aka: Mariam Bazeed; born ca. 1976 in Kuwait; relocated with their family to Eqypt during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990], an Egyptian playwright, poet, performer, and multidisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn; Francisco Mendoza, a playwright who was born in Argentina and partly raised in Brazil before moving to the U.S. a decade ago, now also based in Brooklyn; Stefani Kuo [b. 1995], a playwright and actor raised in both Hong Kong and Taiwan now based in New York City; Khristián Méndez Aguirre, a director and playwright from Guatemala now based in New York City and Austin; and Arun Welandawe-Prematilleke [b. ca. 1988 in Helsinki, Finland], a playwright and director (and sometimes actor) from Sri Lanka now based in New York City.

Together, we reflected on the ways our immigration status, cultural distance, and shifting audiences shape our work. It’s a precarious thing to be an immigrant artist—a tension too often made invisible. For immigrant and diasporic theatremakers working in the U.S., writing is often shaped not only by personal or political urgency, but by the realities of bureaucracy, translation, and institutional legibility.

Here we gathered to engage in questions of authenticity, audience, representation, and survival, from the politics of language and translation to the very real pressures of visa applications and institutional gatekeeping. We considered how lived experience shapes approaches to our artistry, and how for international artists working in America, storytelling itself becomes a site of both constraint and possibility. What happens when you write about a country you no longer live in? How do time, language, and place intervene in the storytelling?

Below are excerpts from our conversation, edited for concision and clarity.

LYNDSEY BOURNE: I want to start by asking about your writing practice. What is your process like these days? How are you thinking about your plays and where they come from? Who are they for?

FRANCISCO MENDOZA: I came to the U.S. as a student and then I transitioned to an O-1 visa. In some ways, the O-1 did shape the writing, because I was writing plays that were most easily going to lead to the kind of achievements that I needed to show for my visa. Then I got my green card, and my writing has gotten weirder and weirder. The further I walk away from the necessity of achievement, the more the plot doesn’t necessarily make logical sense. I am not as afraid to branch into a way of writing that maybe people won’t understand. And it’s okay if they don’t! I think the safety of not feeling like I have to perform has influenced, not necessarily the kind of stories I’m telling, but definitely how I’m telling them.

ARUN WELANDAWE-PREMATILLEKE: In Sri Lanka, I ran a theatre company [Mind Adventures Theatre Company in Colombo; an associate artistic director, 2011-17], and I worked with the same people from the time I was 18 until I was in my 30s. Moving somewhere else, of course, changes the way you work and what your concerns are. The day I got into NYU was the day everything shut down in the world [in 2020], so my first semester was in Sri Lanka over Zoom. But the writing changed when I was writing for that audience, even from home. At that time, we were heavily under the Mahinda Rajapaksa regime—essentially a dictatorship. My work had always been political, and we had always changed scripts to get through censor boards. I was very used to it, and I always felt like I was saying what I wanted to say. But the moment it had the safety of a different audience, the work changed—I became much more willing to point at the thing and name the thing in a very different way. If anything, I found a kind of political freedom.  

[Mahinda Rajapaksa (b. 1945) served as the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka from 2004 to 2005, then the sixth President of Sri Lanka from 2005 to 2015, and then PM again in 2018 and from 2019 to 2022. He was the Leader of the Opposition from 2002 to 2004 and 2018 to 2019, and the Minister of Finance from 2005 to 2015 and 2019 to 2021.

[When Rajapaksa was forced from office in 2022, he launched what amounted to an attempted coup, but ended up signing a letter of resignation. During his political career, he’s been accused of war crimes during the last years of the Sri Lankan civil war (1983-2009) as well as other criminal accusations including human rights violations during his presidency, corruption, and for instigating violence on anti-government protestors during the failed 2022 coup. As of 2023, he’s been sanctioned by Canada for human rights violations.]

STEFANI KUO: I write a lot about Hong Kong and Taiwan, especially Hong Kong. I remember going through a phase where I was reading about all these theatres and their mission statements, which all have the word “American” or “America” in it. So even if I’m writing about an international thing in Hong Kong, it still has to relate back to America. Sometimes the actors I work with in the U.S., even if they have heritage from where I’m from, don’t understand how to relate to my work, even if they speak the language or understand the culture from their grandparents or parents. That was shocking to me; I thought we were all in the same box. But there’s a gap because of where I grew up versus where they grew up.

That gap really interests me—the shared feeling of “I’m not from here.” It leads to my next question: A lot of the plays getting produced in the U.S. telling stories that represent other countries and other cultures are written by second- or third-generation Americans, who are often writing about the experiences of their own parents or grandparents. There are obvious reasons for this: Bureaucracy, gatekeeping, and systemic barriers make it much harder for immigrant artists to break through. As we’ve been saying, there are also the ways in which we have to tailor our writing to an American audience. Is this something you think about? How is this sitting with you?

KHRISTIÁN MÉNDEZ AGUIRRE: Right now, I’m trying to find Guatemalan actors and a director for a reading I’m doing, and you can imagine what that process is like. The assumption is that I have something in common with someone who is Guatemalan but perhaps grew up in the U.S. and is first-generation Guatemalan American. That’s an assumption that makes both of us legible to the artistic leadership of those institutions and how they make us legible to their audiences, because the question always is: Will the audience get it? Will the audience come? 

FRANCISCO: I think Americans are always more comfortable seeing immigration as a cultural issue rather than a legal one, because it demands less work to make space for a cultural experience than for a legal reality. I have been here 10 years and I’ve seen more and more plays about international experiences, and even about immigration, getting produced. Yes, the vast majority of those plays have been written by Americans, even if they come from families who were not originally American. So clearly the appetite for the experience is there. The barriers that prevent immigrants from getting to write and direct their own experiences on American stages are also in place. 

BAZEED: There is a divide that I feel as someone who very much still identifies as “fresh off the boat.” I am not from America. I am not of America. I just live here—and that has meaning in my life. There’s a sense of belonging that isn’t here. I’ve lived in New York since January 2002, so it is the place where I have spent most of my life. At this point, English is more accessible to me than Arabic. It comes easier because I use it every day. But I was born into a condition of diaspora. I was born in the Gulf. I was there for 14 years. Egypt is where I have spent the least amount of time in my life.

All of those things funnel me into a certain perspective and positionality. I’ve worked with first-generation Arab Americans and we’re different—we’re trying to tell the story of these places differently. In some ways, their access to their culture has been mitigated. There’s a local access that happens in the family home, or you may have it in the community around you, but otherwise, in most American immigrant households, it’s these tiny nuclear families that are still getting access to the stories of their cultures through imperialism and through American hegemony and American media. So the version of life that they’re often talking about when they talk about their cultures is a little bit Orientalized, and you can see that filter; mine is becoming more Orientalized as I have more distance from my culture. I can’t make a contemporary reference or joke if my entire life depended on it. For me to name a cultural meme from Egypt that’s big right now? I wouldn’t know. I’m not there. 

[I can’t be certain if Bazeed chose the word ‘Orientalize’ for the overtones expressed by Edward Said (1935-2003; Palestinian-American academic, literary critic, and political activist) in his 1978 book Orientalism (Pantheon Books), but it sounds as if they did. In Said’s terms, the word means to represent or portray cultures of the Middle East, Asia, and North Africa in a stereotyped way that emphasizes their exoticism and otherness, often reinforcing colonialist views of Western superiority.]

I would love to talk a little more about something that you just brought up, Bazeed, which is how time shifts your relationship to your own culture and the ways that you are writing about culture and place.

STEFANI: I write a lot about Hong Kong, but I didn’t used to. I remember in 2019, when the Hong Kong protests [15 March 2019-30 June 2020] started, a friend was like, “Have you written a play about it?” Which I was totally taken aback by, but then this friend said, “Well, you know, if you don’t write it, some British guy who’s never been to Hong Kong is going to write it.” So I wrote a play, and in the play Trump is mentioned because he was president back then. Because of that, because American politicians are mentioned, the play is relevant to America. There’s a relatability thing that I find to be very American. People often ask, “Would you do this play in Hong Kong?” And the thing is, if this play was done in Hong Kong, it would be done entirely in Cantonese. It would be a different play. People think because it’s multilingual, it’s globally applicable. That’s not true. If you put it in another place, it will become a different play. It has to.

FRANCISCO: I often feel like I’m existing in a world that asks me to be sure of who I am. My bio starts with my markers, and I am those markers: I am this sexuality and this race and this nationality, and this is what I’m bringing into the rehearsal room. I have a connection to Argentina, of course, but, as Bazeed was saying, ask me to pull up a meme and I won’t get it. I think the natural instinct is to feel shame about it, like I’m an imposter, and I feel like that shame has the potential to bring in a harshness about my identity—that I have to defend it. So I actively have to build for myself a flexibility that maybe the industry itself won’t necessarily permit. Maybe my experience and my nationality and my passport don’t endow me with an automatic authority to speak on everything that relates to my identity. I don’t want that for myself. There would have been a time where I would’ve felt ashamed of the distance that I’m acquiring from the culture that spawned me. But I don’t live there; I live here. There’s no shame about that. That’s just what it is. 

ARUN: A lot of the stuff that I’ve written is a period piece, now that Sri Lanka has a democratically elected, left-leaning socialist government. An extraordinary thing has happened in our lifetime, and only a few months ago. Finally! So I’m very conscious of the idea of becoming a diaspora writer who is constantly trapped in a vision of a country that you left rather than what that country is now. I’ve had moments back home where we thought we were in a better place, and the work did become sort of irrelevant, and then, five years later, it became relevant again. It is constantly moving, and your work is constantly shifting to both place and time. I think you can’t really escape that.

[Anura Kumara Dissanayake (b. 1968) was inaugurated on 23 September 2024 as the tenth President of Sri Lanka. He is the leader of the National People’s Power, a coalition of left-wing and progressive parties. Dissanayake, however, is, himself, a Marxist.]

KHRISTIÁN: I do think we have this capacity or this privilege or curse of trying to make sense of a thing without having to live it every day by virtue of being outsiders. Some of the environmental issues that are now happening in the U.S. have happened in my country for a long time. My family hasn’t had steady water in northern Guatemala City for over 10 years. I’m able to be here in the U.S. and take a break from not having steady water and write a play about it, which is for sure privilege. It’s also a way to reflect things back to these communities that we come from, and there’s pride in this. The NGO that I was working with to write my latest play, they were like, “Oh my God, you’re in New York, and you want to write a play about the forest fires in Guatemala?” It puts this expectation on the work. I just want to name that transnational tension and privilege and joy too, because it’s kind of cool that the work also gets to serve that.

[Guatemala experienced an alarming number of forest fires in April 2024 and a "state of calamity" was declared. By May, when the start of the rainy season extinguished most of the fires, over 157.5 square miles of land were affected.]

I’m thinking more lately about the use of theatre and performance in terms of writing place, and how that sense of place lives spatially in theatre; it unfolds and exists physically and in real time. How do you write non-American places into American theatre spaces, knowing that translation or mistranslation—cultural, linguistic, temporal—is inevitable?

STEFANI: When I picture plays in my head, it’s just a vacuum. And then I see things, and those things are usually influenced by where I’ve been. So a lot of plays are set in Hong Kong or Taiwan. They are murky, specific places, but a lot of it is influenced by how time is working with the landscape. I don’t really write linear plays, and I think that’s because I grew up watching and reading so much Taiwanese and Chinese stuff that is very nonlinear, very circular. I was reading this book about the colonization of time that talks a lot about how we think of colonialism as mostly a spatial thing. But it’s also a time thing. It’s not just about land; it’s also about how we perceive and experience time. Even the 24-hour clock or the calendar year are very superimposed Western things. That’s not to say it’s American. But I often feel that tension in how I think about storytelling relative to being in America; it almost feels like I’m trying to bring in a different experience of time into how we experience time in the U.S.

BAZEED: Surveillance is in almost every conversation I have these days. I think being strategic is part of this moment. Right now, I’m interested in erasure and allegory as form. What gets left out becomes part of the argument, not just the aesthetic. I think about Sheikh Imam’s protest songs from Egypt with all these veiled allegories like “They’re taking the milk from the cow” to talk about how the British were stealing our resources.

[Sheikk Imam, aka: El Sheikh Emam (1918-95) was a famous Egyptian composer and singer, known for his political songs in favor of the poor and the working classes. Britain controlled Egypt in one form or another from 1882 until 1956.]

STEFANI: I don’t identify as Asian American. I feel like I’m an Asian in America, but I didn’t grow up here. I have a different experience with language and storytelling. I find it really fascinating that so many playwrights try to use English in place of their native language, because I’m not interested in doing that at all. If the play is in Cantonese, I will be writing in Cantonese, or if the play is in Cantonese and English, then we’ll do half-and-half and you can read subtitles. I understand why people use English for access, but for me it feels like hearing the language is a huge part of experiencing the culture—just the environment of being in that language, what it brings out in people. Because people behave differently when they speak different languages.

ARUN: For me, the hardest thing about language is, like, a Sri Lankan sentence in English sort of has too many words in it for an American mouth. There’s a process I can see of an American actor getting used to it and finding their way into it, which is lovely. But the moment there’s a person who’s grown up in Sri Lanka in the room, and they read the lines—it’s like, Boom! Oh, right, I’ve forgotten what the ease was like.

FRANCISCO: Translation is not just about finding equivalents, but rather thinking, approaching a view of the world from a different perspective. Right? With theatre, in some ways it’s always a translation. I wrote something, and the people who are going to put it up will translate it to that time, to that moment, to who they are, to the resources that they have at hand, to the audience that they’re playing to. When we make a play from one country in another country—even a production that’s been transferred—none of us can have the same experience. There isn’t a complete encapsulation of the theatrical experience that can survive place and time. It’s just going to be completely different.

[Lyndsey Bourne is a Canadian writer, teacher, and doula (born and raised in North Vancouver and Penticton, British Columbia, in Canada’s far west) working with The Doula Project. Her plays include The Second Body (2020), Mabel’s Mine (2025), and I Was Unbecoming Then (2020).  She teaches playwriting at Playwrights Horizons Theater School (New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts).