Writer-performer Samantha Streit of Finding Forests brings her show, Letters to Joan, to the Voila! Festival this month.
“In 1956 Brooklyn, an aspiring playwright falls in love, her letters brimming with desire and ambition.
Decades later, her granddaughter, a writer herself, uncovers them—tracing the arc of a love story cut short and a dream left unfinished.
Between a Brooklyn summer alive with possibility and a present-day American diner steeped in nostalgia, past and present blur.
Letters to Joan explores the dreams we chase, the ones we abandon, and the unshakable longing for the life that might have been.”
Where: Barons Court Theatre
When: 12-15 Nov
Ticket link: https://www.voilafestival.co.uk/events/letters-to-joan/
Tell me a bit about your show. Where did the idea come from?
Letters to Joan moves between a Brooklyn summer alive with possibility and a present-day American diner steeped in nostalgia, where a young woman confronts her own questions of love and ambition.
She sits across from the man who once held her grandmother’s heart, wrestling with the choices that shaped two lives.The play is inspired by hundreds of real love letters between my grandparents.
Two years ago, after Thanksgiving dinner, my aunt handed me a box of those letters. I was twenty-three – the same age Joan was when she wrote them.
Through her words, I met her as the woman she was before life intervened: witty, wildly romantic, freshly out of Columbia’s MFA Playwriting program, and full of artistic fire.
In the summer of ’56 she fell for a lifeguard named Leonard, and their correspondence is electric – full of longing, hope, and the ache of big dreams.
Her voice became the thread through which I began exploring the space between the lives we imagine and the ones we live – and what it means to honour the dreams and stories we inherit.
Letters to Joan is my love letter back to my grandparents.
Why should audiences choose your show? How would you sell it in one sentence?
Letters to Joan offers a rare pause in a world that moves too fast — a chance to step into an intimate conversation between two people who, by time and logic, should never have met.
Audiences in Edinburgh often told me they saw their own families in this story: grandparents they wished they’d asked more questions, loves that changed them, dreams that still tug at the edges of their lives.
It opened people up and inspired many to write to their own parents and grandparents. The play invites audiences to slow down and step into a story that feels both deeply personal and strangely familiar.
It’s for anyone who’s ever felt lost, fallen in love, or chased a dream that felt just out of reach. Audiences lingered after performances, sharing memories and writing postcards to loved ones.
It’s a heart-warming, intergenerational story – a reminder that our words, even decades later, still have the power to reach someone we barely knew.
ONE SENTENCE: Letters to Joan explores the dreams we chase, the ones we abandon, and the unshakable longing for the life that might have been.
What does being part of the Voila! Festival mean to you?
I’m so grateful to bring this piece to the Voila! Festival. Letters to Joan is a deeply transatlantic story – born in New York, finished in London, with collaborators spread between the UK, New York, and Oregon – so being part of an international festival feels beautifully aligned.
Moving to London marked a new chapter in my life and career, and it’s here that I finally found the clarity to finish writing the play. Sharing the work at Voila! feels like bringing my grandmother’s unfinished dream full-circle.
I’m excited to connect with new audiences, build community with international artists, and keep developing the piece.
At its heart, this is a story about remembering – and being remembered – and Voila! feels like exactly the kind of space where that conversation belongs.
How did you make a start in the industry?
I’ve been acting my whole life. I grew up in New York City and trained at The Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute before studying Theatre at Duke University, where I developed my one-woman Shakespeare show.
I’ve also trained at RADA and Atlantic Theatre Company. After graduating, I discovered my grandparents’ love letters and began writing Letters to Joan as a way to take creative agency and and build my own work.
I wrote, produced, and performed the piece, and presenting it first at the Edinburgh Fringe became the most meaningful entry point into my professional career.
I moved to London in 2024, and bringing the play here feels deeply meaningful.
Voila! marks almost exactly three years since I first opened that box of letters, and I’ve been following their story ever since.
What’s next for the show?
I’m excited to continue sharing this story with a wider audience.
We’re exploring possibilities for a longer run in both London and New York, as well as a larger venue at next year’s Edinburgh Fringe.
I’m also developing a longer version of the script and am beginning to imagine how the story might live on screen, exploring TV and film adaptation.