Isabelle Sanatdar Stevens ’22

Since childhood, Isabelle has wanted to create and tell stories. She came to Smith with her sights set on graduate school in English or theater. “I knew that coming from a low-income, first-gen, Iranian-American, single-parent-with-a-physical-disability household, I didn't have the funds to do this if it wasn't fully funded, and I didn't have the safety net of familial support if I didn't get in right after graduating,” Isabelle says.

“The process of working with Lazarus Center staff to fully realize my goals and be able to articulate them was life-changing.”

The one-act play Isabelle wrote for a class with Professor Andrea Hairston in her junior year catalyzed her future. She went on to participate in a national young playwrights festival, serve two Praxis-funded internships and received ongoing career advice from her theater professors. The summer after graduating, she worked as the arts administration apprentice at a New York theater company, where she learned the ins and outs of arts management and producing through job shadowing.

“The process of working with Lazarus Center staff to fully realize my goals and be able to articulate them was life-changing,” says Isabelle, who is in her first year of the playwriting MFA program at Boston University and also works at the theater company where she was an apprentice, now as the year-round producing assistant.

Isabelle has a head start on her career goal to open a theater company “dedicated to putting multicultural and multilingual theater written by folx from underrepresented and underserved communities on U.S. stages.”

“I still keep in touch with my professors from Smith, and their continued support and kindness warms my heart,” adds Isabelle.