Today we’d like to introduce you to Lily Abha Cratsley.
Hi Lily, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
My journey in the performing arts began where so many of ours do: theater camp. As a curious seven-year-old, I followed my older sister to a musical summer program and discovered the joys of singing. At the time I couldn’t understand the intense sensation I felt when performing a song, but I knew that I wanted to feel that way as much as possible. So, I caught the musical theater bug, as they say.
Looking back now, I remember myself as this tiny, brown girl terrified of drowning in the sea of her peers. But singing in my school choir or performing at camp, something inside of me was unlocked. I was asked to be big–to project, to belt–and I was praised for it. My voice developed into a strong force, one that demanded it be heard and respected. The stage, and more specifically singing, became the one place I could feel powerful as a young Desi girl.
I kept performing throughout my adolescence and eventually grew to conceptualize myself not only as a singer but also as an actor. In high school and college, I began taking theater quite seriously–experimenting with devised work, trying my hand at light design or directing, studying verbatim theater techniques, and even serving as the Social Engagement Coordinator for Georgetown University’s nomadic-theatre troupe. Through those experiences, I slowly discovered just how powerfully theater could be a platform for creating social change. I was enamored by that potential. But even in those efforts, I was still leaving a piece of myself outside the rehearsal room… And that piece was the same tiny, brown girl who first walked into a theater at seven.
As a teenager, I had gotten to tell impactful stories and play strong characters, but I had never told my own story or played a character of my identity. And unfortunately, I hadn’t gotten to see anyone else do it either. Eventually, I decided it was time to take things into my own hands. In the fall of 2021, I enrolled in my first playwriting class and wrote my first play, ABCD, about intergenerational trauma passed between women in Indian-American families. And, I suppose, from there, the rest is history.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
As an emerging artist, I have faced repeated barriers in my development. It wasn’t until the first staged reading of my play, ABCD, that I even got to work with another Indian woman in the theater. Can you believe that? And I wish I could say it instantly got easier after that, but as my network of Desi artists gradually grew, and we started to share our struggles, I was faced with daunting questions. Submitting my self-tapes and scripts over and over again without results, I became frustrated and confused. “Am I a bad writer?” “Are my performances uninspired?” Or, I feared, are theaters resistant to investing their time and money in “unfamiliar narratives” like mine? Do they believe that their audiences will find stories about Indian women unrelatable or confusing? Do they think Desi actors can’t tap into universal themes? And why do they keep posting casting calls for “Asian” actors if they clearly didn’t intend for brown South Asians to attend?
Those fears, frustrations, and anxieties piled up, and I started to put a massive amount of pressure on myself to succeed. Any opportunity that I did secure, I was intent on perfecting. I felt the need to prove not only for myself but for an entire community of artists that brown voices were remarkable and deserving. And so, with every new submission or acquired opportunity, I found myself simultaneously fighting imposter syndrome and pursuing undeniable perfection.
I am still in the midst of many of these internal battles. However, I like to hope that my work and my community are starting to change things for the next group of emerging artists.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
To put it simply, I’m a performer and a playwright. If I want to be more abstract, I like to say that I am an artist who dives into dissonance. My creative work tends to center liminal spaces or seeming contradictions, like my own experience living between Indian and American identities. As a playwright, I have produced two new works exploring this space.
ABCD is a full-length play questioning what it truly means to be an “American Born Confused Desi.” It unravels the relationships between a daughter, a mother, and a Nani as they prepare dinner together and conflict bubbles to the service. It was a featured finalist in two competitive festivals with staged readings directed by Reena Dutt – the Occidental New Works Festival and the Garry Marshall Theatre New Works Festival. And then, it actually just closed its first staged production, directed by J. Mehr Kaur, at the Greenway Court Theatre with resident company, KriyaShakti Performing Arts. Following sold-out crowds for our initial six-show run in November, we were even granted a three-show extension!
My second play is my solo show, The Fairy Who Cried Gems. It is a more whimsical piece, melding different genres together like folk tales with verbatim techniques, to explores oral histories of young Desi-American women. Jasmine Sharma directed its workshop production that went up last April at Keck Theater.
Alongside my original works, I have also spent most of my life performing in stage plays, musicals, concerts, and choirs. I was a company member of Occidental Children’s Theater last year, an acrobatic troupe that performs international folk tales every summer in Eagle Rock. I also dearly love collaborating as an actor in the development of new plays, like the recent reading of Ang Cruz’s play Truths & A Lie, for which I read as Riya at the David Henry Hwang Theater.
We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
The bottom line is that I want to help people. I want my art to encourage meaningful social change. In the theater, that often means telling stories that challenge existing prejudices and expand an unfamiliar audience member’s worldview. It can also be uplifting voices who have been historically underrepresented on stage. For so much of my life, starting as that scared, small brown girl–I never saw my experiences represented in the theater or major media., So, I suppose success for me is offering other people the kind of representation I would have wanted growing up.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.lilyabha.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/labhac
- Other: www.instagram.com/abcdtheplay
Image Credits
Melissa Lee (personal photo) Nick Graves (Stage Raw quote photo) Nick Graves (Extension photo) Melissa Lee (Tablework photo) Nick Graves (Sold Out Photo) Jeyakumar Sathyamoorthy (Guitar and Microphone photo) Melissa Lee (Black and White Photo)
