We live in a very crazy world right now. A country that was built on being a melting pot for all people has become very divided.

Immigrants that were once welcomed with open arms are now being targeted, hunted & taken away from their families for no reason at all, other than that they were being from another country.

When I read about Playwright, Actress & Co-Artistic Director Samantha Blain's show ISLA, I knew this was a story I wanted to help tell.

In this interview, Samantha answered my call to share:

• The childhood movie musicals & community theatre that sparked her path as a theatre maker and actress
• Why now is the moment for Hit The Lights! to premiere ISLA at WP Theater after nearly a decade of development
• How ISLA began as a deeply personal quest to understand and honor her family’s Cuban immigration story
• What she hopes audiences feel and question about family history, home & belonging after seeing ISLA
• How being Co-Artistic Director of Hit The Lights! lets her build process, community & company culture beyond a single role
• How ISLA humanizes immigration by centering real families, complex choices, and the love behind leaving home
• Why ISLA is a magical, multi-generational night of theatre that invites everyone into the story
• So much more

Connect with Samantha: Website, Instagram

ISLA, the latest full-length work from acclaimed theatre company Hit the Lights!

A uniquely original family history led by founding company member Samantha Blain, ISLA tells Samantha's Caribbean coming-of-age story where American lineage is born when three young women learn that sometimes the real world can be stronger than magic.

Based on the true saga of one family exodus to Miami via the 1960's Freedom Flights, ISLA is a visually sumptuous, musically driven play that evokes the rustic spirit of pre-Castro Cuba’s kitchens, fields, dance halls and public squares.

Samantha, in the role of her aunt, must ally with her sisters to chart a path to an uncertain and newly imagined future.

This hour-long, all-ages performance features a full original songbook and a driving Latin jazz-influenced score composed and performed live at each show.

Cinematic projections, recorded interviews with Samantha’s mother and aunts, and an extended cast of handmade shadow puppets revitalize this carousel slideshow of generational memory through the exquisite craft of Hit The Light’s technical team.

Echoing the family's odyssey, ISLA’s immersive set is a kinetic picture book in a state of continuous transformation. Photos on the wall rise up and reach through time, a dreamlike menagerie of jungle creatures menace and protect the children, and the cast of actresses shift seamlessly from silhouette to vibrant life.

ISLA unforgettably explores the inherent possibilities of the immigrant’s journey and offers lived insight into how we come to terms with the things we keep and the things we leave behind.

ISLA will play WP Theater in NYC from August 8-29, 2026. Click Here for Tickets!

1. Who or what inspired you to become a theatre maker and actress? I grew up watching all the old movie musicals with my mom who was a huge Doris Day fan, and I was awed by how many things were happening at once with the singing, dancing, and acting. It all worked together to create this big feeling, and I think that really stayed with me.

Then I found community theatre growing up in the Hudson Valley, and that was it for me. I was watching people of all ages and backgrounds come together to make something, and I remember feeling like, “Oh, this is what I want to be part of.” It felt joyful, exciting and inclusive. That is what made me fall in love with theater, and it is still what keeps me making it.

2. The newest piece from your company Hit the Lights!, ISLA, will be making its world premiere this August at WP Theater. What made now the right time to present this play? ISLA has been with us for nearly a decade, so in some ways it feels like now is the moment because the piece is finally ready to meet an audience in its fullest form.

As a company, we have grown into the kind of ensemble that can really hold this story. The show brings together a flurry of skills and styles we have been honing for years: music, puppetry, documentary theater, and live performance.

This kind of unique layered storytelling is what we love most. So this premiere feels like the place where a deeply personal family history and years of artistic growth come together.

It also feels urgent because so many people, specifically in the U.S., are thinking about where they come from, what home means, how to decide whether to leave or stay, and how families navigate those hard decisions, especially when those decisions are forced upon them.

For me, ISLA is a way to look at displacement not only as something that breaks a family apart, but as something that can reveal its resilience, its love, and the stories that survive across generations.

Samantha Blain
Photo Credit: Ricky Gee Photography

3. What was the catalyst for creating ISLA? At Hit The Lights! we create original work through something we call the Signature Cycle. Each member of the company has the chance to pitch an original show idea, and then we decide together what we want to build as an ensemble. ISLA began as my pitch and is the 4th in the cycle.

When I started thinking about what story I wanted to bring into the room, I kept coming back to my family. I grew up hearing stories about my mother and aunts’ life in Cuba, their journey to the U.S., and their experience fleeing Cuba on the 1960s Freedom Flights.

My family is full of oral storytellers, so there were not a lot of bedtime books on the shelf, but there were always stories. Some were funny, scary and fantastical sounding.

As I got older, I realized how so much of my family history lived in small pieces here and there, in family jokes, in passing comments, and I started asking more questions.

ISLA did not begin as, “I’m going to make a show about immigration.” It was really, “I want to understand my family”.

I wanted to share their story and pass it down in my own way. Once I brought it to Hit The Lights!, it grew into something bigger, because the kind of work we make has always been able to find the magic and heart inside even the most complicated stories.

4. What do you hope audiences come away with after seeing the show? Gosh, so many things. I hope audiences leave feeling more curious about the histories living inside their own families, especially the ones carried by elders and shared in small, passing moments. I hope ISLA encourages people to slow down, listen, and to share those memories.

I also hope people feel excited by what a devising ensemble can build together. ISLA is a true mosaic of styles and voices, shaped by the hands and imaginations of many artists working toward this one story. It is a really lovely night of theatre, and I think folks will walk away moved and inspired.

Cast of ISLA
Left to Right:Tiffany Iris, Daniela Delahuerta & Samantha Blain
Photo Credit: Rebecca J. Michelson

5. What is the hardest scene for you to perform and why is it so difficult? Every time I’ve performed this piece in previous workshops, there has been a new hard moment that hits me differently. The ending has always gotten me in my feels because it is such a personal ending.

However, since my mother passed away just days before our workshop in 2022, I think the hardest part now is hearing her voice in the audio interviews toward the end of the show.

There is a moment where all three sisters, including myself, are facing upstage, away from the audience. If the audience could see my face during that audio sequence, they would definitely see some very teary eyes.

It is difficult because I am not just performing the story. In that moment it feels like I am completely enveloped by it, hearing her voice, and carrying her with me in real time.

6. In this show, you are going to be playing your real-life aunt. What excites you about embodying your aunt and getting to share part of her story? Oh, I love Tía Lulu so much. I am so excited to not only share her voice, but also her incredible poetry in both English and Spanish.

Her poems serve as these beautiful transitional chapters within the piece, helping move us through memory, place, and time. Her voiceover audio is really one of the main characters of the show and serves as a through line for the whole piece.

She is such a talent and such an eccentric artist in her own right. Her stories were always my favorite growing up because they felt magical and mystical, like they opened up a whole other world.

Getting to play the odd sister and perform some of the fun shadow sequences inspired by her is just a blast. Uplifting her and her stories brings me so much joy.

Scene from a previous production of ISLA
Photo Courtesy of Hit The Lights! Website

7. In addition to being a theatre maker and actress, you are also the Co-Artistic Director of Hit The Lights! Co, a theatre company dedicated to puppetry arts and multidisciplinary storytelling. What do you get from being the Co-Artistic Director that you don't get from acting? I love this question because I never really set out to be an arts leader or to be part of running a theatre company. That path found me very organically, and now the passion I have for shared artistic leadership runs really deep.

The other three Co-Artistic Directors are my family, and getting to lead alongside them is truly a gift. What I get from that role is a much bigger relationship to the work. I am not only thinking about one character or one performance. I am thinking about the room, the process, the people, the future of the company, and how we can keep making art in a way that feels healthy, productive, and sustainable.

I love thinking about how we build collaboratively, with many voices in the room, while still moving forward with care. That kind of leadership feels meaningful to me because it helps shape not just the show, but the culture around how the show gets made.

Acting is a skill and a love I have had for most of my life, and I still love it. However, being a Co-Artistic Director lets me build something bigger than a single role. It lets me help shape the kind of artistic home I want to be part of, with people who inspire me every day.

8. Bring things back to ISLA, press notes state the show talks about how we come to terms with the things we keep and the things we leave behind. What is something from your childhood that you just had to keep? I am going to answer this in a more personal way. Something from my childhood that I had to keep are my shared journals that my sister, friends and I would pass back and forth, leave in each other’s lockers, write in, decorate, and then pass on again.

I think they were called “smash books”, which is so early 2000s. Those journals are such little time capsules. A lot of those friends are still in my life today, so being able to revisit those memories and share them with the people who lived them with me feels really special.

Samantha Blain and the women who inspired ISLA
Photo Courtesy of Samantha Blain Social Media

9. What was something you were able to leave behind? Something I think I’ve been able to leave behind is the idea that time with family has to look exactly the same as it did when I was growing up. I am still very close with my family, but as we all get older, our traditions naturally change.

The gatherings look different, the people around the table shift, and the way we spend time together evolves. Letting those traditions change does not mean losing them.

10. How do you feel ISLA will help keep the conversation going about why it's so important we keep allowing immigrants to come to the US, despite what our current administration is trying to do? I think ISLA helps keep that conversation going by asking people to see the individuals and families behind these choices. People leaving their homes in search of another are real people, with real stories, and maybe with more similarities to us than we think.

It is not an easy thing to decide to leave your home, your family, your memories, your traditions, and the place that made you. I think sometimes we talk about immigration like it is simple, but there are so many complex difficult choices inside of it. For my family, and for so many families, leaving was tied to survival, hope, and the possibility of something different.

I hope ISLA gives people a chance to sit with that. To see the perseverance it takes to leave, but also the love and humanity that people carry with them when they go.

11. What is something we didn't get to talk about in this interview that you'd like my audience to know about you? I think I would want people to know that ISLA is a really cool night of theatre. Yes, it is about family history, but I do feel like all audiences will connect with it. It really is for all ages.

This is a show for the whole family to experience together. The show is funny, magical, musical, and playful with surprises throughout. I really hope people come to enjoy it with us.

Samantha Blain
Photo Credit: Ricky Gee Photography

More on Samantha Blain:

Samantha Blain is a Cuban American multidisciplinary artist, creative producer, and arts education leader. Raised in a bilingual immigrant household filled with music, cooking, and community, she brings those values into every space she creates.

As a performer, she has performed Off-Broadway, regionally, on National Tours, in numerous Broadway workshops, and TV/film. Venue highlights include Ars Nova, BAM, New Victory Theater, and New York City Center, La Mama, and more. She is also Co-Artistic Director of Hit The Lights! Co., an award-winning NYC devising ensemble supported by NYSCA,  New York Foundation of The Arts NYC Women’s Fund and Jim Henson Foundation.

Beyond her artistic work, Samantha is a committed arts administrator and community advocate. She founded Queens Artist Connection, serves on the board of Broadway Bound Kids, and has directed and developed educational programming for organizations across NYC, including New York City Children’s Theater and Atlantic Acting School.

Her work, whether onstage, in the classroom, or in community spaces, centers belonging, collaboration, and access to the arts.

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