Immigrants’ stories have been unfolding on an off-Broadway stage in an uncommon way. One is of a doctor in her 40s who fled Zimbabwe. Another featured a Colombian woman who regretted leaving her homeland for the United States. A third entered into a marriage of convenience with an American after overstaying her visa, and then suffered a violent assault in the subway.
The accounts are based on the true-life tales of immigrants, as remembered and originally recounted by the immigrants themselves but portrayed on stage by actors. The performances at The Verbatim Salon, a monthly theatrical series, began last year at the off-Broadway space Theatre Row and will soon expand to other cities.
But Verbatim Salon is far from being a feel-good show about the foreign-born. It has challenged audiences to see immigrants as complex, messy characters, and asks them to weigh in on immigration issues and the state of the nation. The combination of performance and public discourse has made the series an unusual cultural offering during a time of political polarization: a sort of town hall centered on civics, politics and art.
“There’s a kind of immediacy and relevance to the performance that feels really exciting to me, and part of what it means to have art in conversation with society,” said Scott Illingworth, the creator and director of Verbatim Salon.
Illingworth came up with the concept for the Verbatim Salon after mining similar ground in the past. He’d traveled to the three most conservative rural counties in the country after the 2016 presidential election, he said, sitting down with local residents for every breakfast, lunch and dinner. The result was a multimedia performance, “What I Learned On My Red State Vacation.”
Verbatim Salon emerged eight years later. While the 2024 presidential contest focused a lot of attention on immigration, Illingworth said, “in the months after the election I felt like we were having very uncomplicated conversations about this topic.”
Illingworth, an associate arts professor in the graduate acting program at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, began interviewing immigrants about their journeys and interactions with the U.S. immigration system. Those interviews were then edited down to around 15 minutes apiece and assigned to a rotating cast of actors wearing earpieces, who simultaneously listen to the recording and perform the stories on an otherwise bare stage.
Illingworth said actors are instructed to stay faithful to the words and verbal tics of the immigrants they are portraying, but usually never meet. The immigrants’ identities are never revealed, although some have attended performances and quietly watched as their lives entertained audiences and at times moved them to tears.
Verbatim Salon’s first installment was held in April 2025, amid the Trump administration’s ramp-up of immigration enforcement. The series is now set to travel to other cities, with a Miami salon scheduled for July and a Chicago salon in September.
The series is a project of the American Playwriting Foundation, with proceeds going to different advocacy groups, including the New York Immigration Coalition and the South Asian Council for Social Services. Anna O’Donahue, the Foundation’s artistic producer and literary manager, said the drawn-from-life nature of the stories and verbatim technique produce moments that feel distinct from traditional theater. People dealing with trauma or tragedy don’t necessarily sound or look sad, she said. They may laugh or yawn, as a way to distance themselves.
“There are so many moments,” she said, “that I’m just like, ‘You couldn’t write that.’ People are so much more eloquent spontaneously than when playwrights try to create eloquence.”
Regrets, longing and gaming of the system
The stories featured in Verbatim Salon have been wide-ranging.
One immigrant whose story was recounted in January, a woman from Colombia channeled by actress Karina Curet, said she fled her native country due to military persecution. Her mother had spoken out against human rights abuses, and the family went into hiding. Migration to New York at the age of 19 was liberating in some ways, the woman explained, and less so in others.
Immigrants, the woman said via Curet, were forever forced to “reduce” themselves. She lived in a perpetual state of uncertainty and complained of being here on “borrowed time,” never sure when her visa would be revoked and she’d be told to leave the country. “My whole life is in suitcases,” she said.
Curet told the audience the woman dreamed of the day when people wouldn’t be forced to leave their homelands, adding, “[In] Colombia, we live in paradise. You [the United States] just have a job market. If I could put a job market in my home, trust me, I would not be here.”
Marin Ireland, a stage and screen actress whose credits include “Homeland” and “Sneaky Pete,” performed the tale of another immigrant — ironically from the country of Ireland — who overstayed her visa. In desperation, she married her boyfriend of nine months, a measure that bought her some time and dreams of permanent residency.
As the months rolled by, however, she panicked once again when there were no signs of a green card. With three months to go before her papers expired, her story took a sharp turn when she was “very violently sexually attacked on the subway.”
The attack resulted in her spending a night in the hospital, but also, she discovered, improved her chances of obtaining what’s known as a U-visa, designated for victims of crimes. Not long after, with the help of a U.S. senator the woman did not name, she said she secured a green card.
The rapid sequence of events caused Ireland’s character to reflect on her marriage of convenience.
“I didn’t even need to do that,” she said, adding, “I mean, I obviously did. You know, I wasn’t attacked at the right time.”
The line prompted a variety of responses from the audience: laughter, but also a series of audible gasps and an “Oh, my God.”
Meditation and catharsis
The stories themselves are only part of what has made Verbatim Salon unique: After each character study, Illingworth steps onto the stage and urges members of the audience to turn to their left or right and engage with others about what they just encountered.
During the January show, audience members reflected on the decisions of each character. They also discussed the immigration enforcement raids across the country, as well as the protests taking place at that time in Minneapolis and other cities. One woman spoke of the need to fight against “fascism.”
Audience member Kyle Cameron said immigrants were often portrayed in the public discourse in reductive terms, either as “illegals” or people who come “the right way.” But even in the latter case, immigrants face considerable hurdles.
“ [Americans] talk about it as though it’s like, ‘Just sign the papers,’” Cameron told the audience. “And then at every single turn they will make it more difficult. They will dangle it in front of you, like something they can take away. They will take it away.”
Illingworth said for members of the public who serve as both observers and participants, the event serves as “a kind of meditation” at a particularly frenzied political moment.
“ I’m aware that people really appreciate just the kind of air of that space to sit together as things continue to evolve, as things get more intense,” he said. “That space has its own kind of profound value.”
The benefits also accrue to the immigrants whose lives are interpreted.
The stories aren’t neat and tidy
Among the immigrants whose story was captured in a Verbatim Salon is Vladislav, a 43-year-old ethnic Ukrainian who fled St. Petersburg, Russia, with his wife and daughter, days after the invasion of Ukraine four years ago.
“We left on one of the last trains into Finland,” said Vladislav in an interview with Gothamist. He asked that his full name not be used because he feared speaking out could jeopardize his asylum application. He and his family now live in Manhattan.
Vladislav said the experience of attending a show with his wife and daughter in November and watching his life’s central drama performed by an actor was “psycho-therapeutic.” As the people around them began to tear up, he and his family did, too.
But he said Verbatim Salon also serves a larger purpose, because the stories aren’t neat and tidy and don’t easily fit into broad political narratives.
“ I really don’t mean just the ultra-conservative anti-immigrant sentiment,” he said. “Sometimes even the more benevolent forces see you as a box to tick rather than a person to really understand what propelled you to leave your world behind.”
The series has been meaningful for members of the arts community as well. Ireland said many were deeply unsettled by the recent actions of federal immigration agents.
“They’re going door to door,” she said. “And the idea of door to door feels very frightening and familiar to a lot of people.”
At this particularly contentious moment in American history, she said, many artists have struggled to answer the question of how they can be “of service.” For her, at least, the answer lay in the Verbatim Salon.
“I’ve never felt more useful than when I’ve done this,” Ireland said. “I hope to be more and more a part of it, if they let me.”
“I just really believe in it.”
The next installment of the monthly Verbatim Salon takes place at Theatre Row on May 19.