19 April 2025 (released)
10 April 2025
Barbara Kahn is a legendary and multi-award-winning playwright, director, actor, and keeper of the theatrical traditions and history of the Lower East Side and New York City. In April 2025, a brand-new play, “The Road Ahead,” became Barbara’s 30th production at the Theater for the New City, which has been her “home” for all these years.
Barbara was honored with the 2024 Village Award by the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation for using New York’s history as a platform for telling universal tales and giving a powerful voice to the marginalized, overlooked, and forgotten in her work.
Barbara’s plays usually highlight recurring themes: the stories of immigrants and their lives in a “new world”, as well as touching stories of the representatives of the LGBTQ+ community and the hardships they must endure.
We were able to speak to Barbara about the colorful worlds that she creates in her plays and productions.
Lisa Monde: Tell me about your plays. How do you write them? How do you unite the stories of immigrants, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and history?
Barbara Kahn: Well, the inspiration for my plays comes from several different sources. The primary one is that I am the daughter of a refugee. My siblings and I always make the distinction between refugee, migrant, and immigrant. Because too often these words are used interchangeably and they're not interchangeable. Knowing my father's experience as a child; he was four when the war started, has influenced much of what I want to write about. Which is: oppression and marginalized groups, it's not just LGBTQ and immigrant stories. It's other marginalized groups, like African Americans, for example. So, I try to find something from the historical past that would resonate today. I often say it's like holding a mirror to the present by revealing the past.
LM: I like that quote of yours.
BK: ?hat's my impulse for the historical plays. I try to incorporate not just lesbian characters and women characters, but African Americans and immigrants.
LM: In ?ne of your recent plays, “The Time Travelers Club”, there were certain characters that I heard of before… but then there were some that I did not know. How do you choose your featured characters?
BK: I create the situations, whether they’re “real life” or fictionalized, based on my research of historical documents and biographies. Then I create the characters that I want to include. And I just have them talk to each other and I write down their conversations. After that – I move them onto the stage.
LM: Do you sometimes take historical characters, who may not have met in real life, and bring them together?
BK: Sometimes, yes. If it's plausible that they would have met.
LM: A lot of your characters in the shows - are queer. When casting for a show, is it important for you to have queer actors playing queer characters?
BK: No, I generally don't like working with stereotypes. I do my best to create characters, not stereotypes. So, I don't need to cast stereotypes.
LM: When you’re writing a new play, creating new characters – do you find yourself thinking sometimes: “I can see this actor playing the part…”, from the actors that you’ve worked with previously? Do you pre-cast beforehand?
BK: Sometimes. For instance, in my previous production of “Fair Winds and Winds of War,” I was having trouble casting. Nobody was even close to one of the leading characters in the play. That may happen too.
LM: Do you find your previous acting experience to be helpful when directing and writing shows?
BK: Definitely. A good director should know how it is to stand in the actor’s shoes. I think it is important for an actor to have training, as well as to be willing to completely “inhabit’’ a character and become a chameleon.
LM: Do you have certain historical characters in mind that you still want to write plays about in the future?
BK: Nothing I can think of off the top of my head, but it'll come to me at some point, and I should make notes when it does. I often forget to.
LM: What is your process like? When ideas come, you put them on paper and then eventually a story comes together bit by bit.
BK: Once I ran all the way home and wrote down a whole scene – it was so clear in my head. But you know, inspiration comes from various discoveries, and I just like to choose my characters and allow them to interact amongst themselves.
LM: What do you enjoy the most – imagining and creating a character or seeing that character come to life on stage?
BK: The creation of characters and their stories. Being able to tell stories and share them with the spectators.
Tickets for Barbara Kahn's new play "The Road Ahead": https://www.tdf.org/shows/22469/the-road-ahead
Photo Credit by Joe Bly
