By Jonathan Wemette

	Susan Westfall and her son Pete in Red Square. Westfall’s play, The Boy from Russia, which is making its world premiere at Actor’s Playhouse, is based on Pete’s adoption.

“I have this tape that just came in…”

“And the next thing I knew,” Westfall says, “a little boy showed up on a tricycle outside and something clicked. Just clicked.”

Westfall later learned that the boy’s appearance had been a fluke. “When I asked who he was, nobody knew,” she says. “Nobody knew why he was even there. He wasn't supposed to be. But there he was.” And with a little detective work, Westfall and her husband tracked him down.

Four months later, Westfall, her husband and both sons – biological and adopted – were returning from Russia as a newly expanded family. 

A lifelong playwright, Westfall first wrote about this experience in a 10-minute monologue but had no intention of expanding the piece. It was a conversation with renowned playwright Nilo Cruz, who was working with Westfall on a different project at the time, that changed her mind.

“Nilo said to me, ‘What is the most interesting thing that has happened to you in the last few years?’ And I told him [about the adoption]. There were many, many times I imagined that someone should write about this. But did I plan to write about it? No.”

	Susan Westfall

“Well, why not?” Cruz challenged her.

So Westfall went to work crafting a 23-minute play that premiered at City Theatre (which Westfall co-founded) in their annual Summer Shorts Festival.

After this performance, critic Hap Erstein told Westfall that her play was now “too long to be a short and too short to be a long.” This prompted Westfall to go the rest of the way and make The Boy from Russia full-length.

In its intense development process and numerous drafts, The Boy from Russia made its way through much of the South Florida theatre community. After a while, Westfall felt that “everyone had had their fingerprints on this story at one time or another.”

Everyone, that is, except Actors’ Playhouse Artistic Director David Arisco.

“Dave was fresh eyes,” Westfall recalls, “and honestly I thought, ‘Just give me fresh eyes and maybe something will come out of it.’ And it did.” 

Arisco loved the script and agreed to include it in Actors’ Playhouse’s 2006-2007 season. It is only the second world premiere in the theatre’s 19-year history. 

When Actors’ Playhouse began looking for a cast, chance took a hand in the play’s development once again.

	Susan Westfall, Alan Fein, and their children, Jake and baby Pete, in 2000 in Red Square

Westfall’s sister-in-law is a teacher in Kendall. She suggested that Westfall meet Katya Ilina, the Russian mother of two of her students, for coffee.  “I told [Katya] the quick and dirty version of [my adoption story], and she said, ‘This should be a play.’ And I said, ‘Well, it is a play.’ And she said, ‘Well, I'm an actress!’”

In fact, Katya is making her American regional theatre debut in The Boy from Russia, but she goes back to Moscow every summer for three to four months and performs there. “Chaz [Mena, a local member of the cast], had actually seen her in two productions while he was in Moscow,” Westfall says.

And the coincidences didn’t end there. “Dave Arisco's neighbor Illya, who is Russian, found out that Dave had hired this woman named Katya from Coconut Grove, and Illya told Dave, ‘Katya Ilina from Coconut Grove? That's Abram's daughter-in-law. You've played poker with Abram. You've played poker with her husband, Gary!’"

Westfall laughs. “It's so Miami that any of this could all come together the way it has.”

The playwright hopes, however, that the play will have nationwide appeal. Its chances seem good.

Westfall adopted her son seven years ago, but the practice is just becoming fashionable thanks to celebrity adopters like Angelina Jolie and Madonna. “It’s what people are doing,” Westfall says. “So do they want to see that on a stage? I would think so.”

And the play has only become timelier with the recent shutdown of all foreign adoption agencies in Russia while its ministries are restructured. Officially, the move has no political motivations, but relations between the U.S. and Russia have strained recently and there are accusations that the Russian government simply does not want Americans adopting Russian children.

	Sandra Ives and Avi Hoffman play Beth and Jack in The Boy from Russia

Whatever the case, it is another instance of the stars aligning in such a way that The Boy from Russia seems poised to find an audience, just as they aligned so that it would be written in the first place.

“I don’t think this particular story has been told,” Westfall says, and she’s adamant that now is the right time for it. “So yeah, I’m really hoping that the gods will shine on it.”

It seems likely that they will. They have so far.