Blue in the Right Way

Kevin V. Smith and Daiva Bhandari founded the theatrical production company Blue in the Right Way in 2019 to make provocative, stylized theatre as visual art. Their debut production, Women Beware Women, premiered in Chicago in 2024.

  • Artistic Director

    Daiva Bhandari is a Chicago-based dance and theatre artist originally from southern Louisiana.

    Daiva earned her BA in Drama from Loyola University, New Orleans and studied Modern Dance at Tulane University. In Chicago she has worked with The Neo-Futurists, Steppenwolf, Steep Theatre, Theatre Y, Manual Cinema, Pop Magic Productions, Emerald City Theatre and The Building Stage, and Daiva has performed the choreography of Michael Estanich, Lucy Vurusic-Riner, Corinne Imberski, Kelly Anderson and Erin Kilmurray.

  • Artistic Director

    Kevin is a French-American theatre artist whose queer deconstructionist approach to directing combines the surreal and the expressionistic to create daring and visually arresting abstract stagings.

    Directing credits include James Joyce's Exiles (2011), Albert Camus' The Misunderstanding (2011), Euripides' Medea (2014), András Visky's Juliet (2020), Christopher Marlowe's Edward II (2021), and Thomas Middleton's Women Beware Women (2024).

    Kevin's work has been called "stylized and imaginative" (Chicago Tribune), "in search of a new paradigm for what is considered acceptable theatre in America" (Chicago Critic), "startling and haunting" (Chicago Reader), and "as extraordinary in vision and delivery as it is provocative and captivating" (Chicago Stage Review). Kevin's 2020 production of Juliet at Theatre Y was featured in HowlRound for its Spanish-language supertitles and chorus of mothers and infants on stage. It was highly recommended by WTTW as, "a work of both real life and pure poetry."

    Kevin is a four-time Non-Equity Joseph Jefferson Award-nominated actor, was named “Best Actor of the Year” by Chicago Stage Review, starred Off-Broadway in the notorious production of Jean Genet’s The Maids X 2, and has acted under Tony Award-winning directors Mary Zimmerman and David Cromer. Kevin graduated from Loyola University New Orleans in 2006 and has trained extensively in Viewpoints and Grotowski techniques.

info@blueintherightway.com

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