Migration in Dialogue – Fernando Buzhar Segall
Like many other creatives relocating to the US, screenwriter and playwright Fernando Buzhar Segall’s artistic journey has been shaped by the hopes and demands of one day securing an artist visa. Born in Brazil, he moved to New York City in 2016 to double-major in Drama and Writing for Television at NYU before an unexpected and prolonged visit home at the beginning of the pandemic. Since returning, he’s completed an MFA at Columbia University in Playwriting, and, in the months since graduating, has been making the final steps in preparing for the long-anticipated application for the O1 Visa—also known as the artist visa.
We discussed shaping a creative career and balancing artistic integrity while meeting inaccessible visa requirements while also touching on Segall’s desire to bridge Brazilian and American theater scenes for genuine cultural exchange and representation.
Courtesy of Fernando Buzhar Segall.
Tahney Fosdike: Can you run me through your journey so far between the US and Brazil?
Fernando Buzhar Segall: I always wanted to come to the US. In Brazil, I was part of a traveling clown troupe for a couple of years, which was a formative experience. I enrolled at NYU as an actor and moved in 2016. I didn't know anyone, I had no family and friends. But this is a common thing: people come here for college with the intent of staying.
Since then, I've been planting seeds for an artist visa. I have always tried to do my best so that when I applied, years on, I would be set and good. But, in the spring of 2020, I went to Brazil for 10 days. That's when everything shut down with COVID. I was there for a year and a half figuring out how to return to the US.
I was scared of applying for an artist visa as I heard that it was hard after COVID. So I started at Columbia in 2021. I kept thinking about the artist visa and what I could do to get it. I graduated this May, and I’ll be applying soon, but I heard it will take forever.
TF: That’s a big build-up—you’ve essentially been planning your life around this visa for the past eight or so years. What have these building blocks looked like for you?
FS: For the artist visa, you need to have work produced, some financial gain from your art, be nominated or win some kind of award, and have letters supporting your work. These letters should be from people who can be Googled because those handing out artist visas don't know anything about theater or film.
A lawyer once told me that it makes more sense to be Shakespeare in a basement where no one sees you perform than to be in the chorus of a Broadway show, because for the visa, you need to justify that you are irreplaceable. You need to prove that they can’t find another artist like you in America. Which is stupid—it's America! There's always going to be someone else.
TF: Has this drawn-out process influenced how you go about your writing and relationship-building in the industry?
FS: Instead of being able to do what most American artists can do—focus on their craft and slowly build their career—artists who are foreigners need to be producing things right now. I did a full-length play at a Brooklyn theater that 40 people saw. We didn't have money for marketing. It was all so the visa people could Google it and see that it existed for a weekend.
That doesn’t help my career or develop my writing as an artist; by creating a play solely for the visa, without sufficient time or budget, you risk burning out rather than sustaining your career.
TF: It feels like manipulating the flow of your creative career into checking boxes. Does this put a strain on your pre-existing professional ties with Brazil?
FS: It's complicated. My brother is a screenwriter in Brazil, so I’ve had chances to work with him, but it's affected me the other way around. People here want me to write about being a Brazilian immigrant in New York, which isn’t something I want to do. I’ve done it—writing a play about being a Brazilian immigrant—and it helped me get into grad school. The play was also read at the Brazilian Embassy in New York. It looks great on my resume, but I didn’t enjoy writing it.
New York is focused on theatre about the right-now. They want to hear a traumatic story about how hard it is to immigrate and how hard life is in Latin America. I didn't come here to do that. If I wanted to write about Brazil, why would I come here? Of course, there's importance in writing Brazilian characters even if I'm not writing about Brazil specifically––for representation. But the theater I like can be done anywhere, unspecific to a time and place.
TF: What themes do you like to explore, then?
FS: Nowadays, both in Brazil and New York, what's said on the stage is what the audience already thinks, and everyone is patting themselves on the back. But I want to write plays that people see without thinking that they are being fed a message. I use heightened farces that are slightly absurdist, set in micro-universes or towns that don't exist. I want audiences to enter the theater without knowing if they’re about to see something that they agree with.
TF: Beyond the artist visa, what’s your ideal scenario? Would you like to work between the two countries?
FS: Absolutely. But Brazil is tough—there's little money and little audience. People can break out, but after, they have to come to the US. The director Fernando Meirelles left Brazil, because why wouldn’t he? He had achieved the top of the top in Brazil. Why wouldn't he want to get paid ten, fifteen, twenty times more for his work?
My older brother has always wanted to stay and make films in Brazil. He cares about the art there, but whenever he's starting a new project, it's like he’s starting from the ground, and everything he’s done hasn’t built into anything. It’s hard to have a career in Brazil.
But I want to work in both countries—that is the dream. Brazil has great playwrights, unheard of in the US, and I want to try to bring them here just as much as I want to take American plays to Brazil. After leaving the country to make a career, at some point, you need to give back to where you came from.
TF: It’s intense to be in the early stages of a career while needing to prove how established you are. What would you change about the artist visa process?
FS: Immigration is a hot topic for the elections but the answer is not deportation. The answer is making visas accessible. People applying for the artist visa are the same people who came to study acting, film, and the like. The idea that they'll spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to study and then return to their country is ludicrous. Americans can just study their craft, while foreigners have to put together work to prove that they are special and irreplaceable artists. I don’t want to constantly produce short films and apply to various programs while managing the demands and stress of school. Most people want to enjoy their time in college and I'm far from being an irreplaceable playwright in America—there should be an easier pathway.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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