A curated monthly dose of lifestyle, culture, and rhythm from San Miguel de Allende.
Broadway and Hollywood veterans moved to San Miguel. They did not come here to retire.
What happens when people who have spent decades on and behind the stages of New York and Los Angeles decide they want a change of pace and choose San Miguel de Allende as home?
If you’ve ever known anyone who truly loves theatre, you already know the answer.
Retirement was never really an option.
The artists arrive with résumés, stories, and careers behind them. What they don’t leave behind is the urge to create. The rehearsals continue. The scripts pile up. New productions find their way onto calendars. The work simply follows them south.
San Miguel has long attracted painters, writers, musicians, and creative thinkers looking for a different way of life. Less talked about is the growing community of theatre professionals who have quietly planted roots here over the past several decades. Directors, actors, producers, playwrights, and designers with careers spanning Broadway, regional theatre, television, film, and stages across North America have found something in San Miguel worth staying for.
At the center of that story is Players Workshop, the city’s longest-running English-language theatre company.
Founded in 1982 by Lola Smith, Players Workshop has spent more than four decades producing theatre in San Miguel. Smith, who passed away in 2026 at the age of 100, helped shape the city’s cultural landscape at a time when English-language theatre had little formal presence. Her involvement in the creation of the Santa Ana Theatre at the Biblioteca helped establish a permanent home for generations of productions that followed.
More than forty years later, the company continues to evolve while remaining rooted in the same belief that inspired its founding: good theatre matters.
Today, that legacy continues under Artistic Director Richard Hochberg, whose career spans decades of directing and producing in Los Angeles.
His credits include productions of The Normal Heart, Rent, The Full Monty, The Rocky Horror Show, and works by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Nilo Cruz. Throughout his career, Hochberg has worked across theatre, musical theatre, and film, bringing a depth of experience rarely found in a community theatre setting.
What continues to attract artists like Hochberg to San Miguel is not the opportunity to slow down. It’s the opportunity to keep going.
San Miguel offers something increasingly difficult to find in major creative centers: the ability to continue serious artistic work without many of the pressures that often accompany it. There is room here to experiment. Room to collaborate. Room to take risks without constantly worrying about the next review, the next contract, or the next industry trend.
For many artists, that freedom is not a luxury. It is fuel.
The city has become a place where accomplished creative careers continue rather than conclude. A place where artists can focus less on proving themselves and more on making meaningful work.
One misconception about theatre in San Miguel is that it exists primarily as a hobby.
Spend an evening at Players Workshop and that assumption starts to fall apart.
Many of the people involved bring decades of professional experience from theatre, television, and film. While some built careers in New York and Los Angeles, others come from places including Seattle, Texas, North Carolina, Canada, and even Australia. Some spent years directing productions, others performed professionally, worked behind the scenes, or developed new work. Collectively, they bring a level of craft and discipline that often surprises first-time audiences.
This isn’t theatre created by people looking for something to do.
It’s theatre created by people who never stopped doing it.
That distinction matters.
Players Workshop functions as more than a theatre company. It is a gathering place for artists who still have stories to tell and audiences who appreciate seeing those stories unfold live. In a city celebrated for its galleries, architecture, culinary scene, and festivals, it serves as a reminder that culture is not only preserved here. It is still being actively created.
That creative energy is reflected throughout Players Workshop’s 2026 season.
January opened with Woody Allen’s Central Park West, which played to sold-out audiences and demonstrated the appetite local theatre-goers have for sophisticated contemporary work.
In April, the company staged The Dinosaurs as part of its New Works Series. The timing was notable. While audiences in San Miguel were watching the production, the same play was running Off-Broadway in New York.
Moments like that reflect one of the organization’s larger goals: connecting local audiences to contemporary plays and conversations happening throughout the broader theatre world.
As Board President Antonia Banewicz puts it, “If we can bring even a glimpse of the newest work being developed in New York, Chicago, and beyond to our audiences here in San Miguel, then we’ve done our job.”
The centerpiece of the current season arrives August 5 through 8 with Other Desert Cities by Jon Robin Baitz.
The acclaimed drama follows novelist Brooke Wyeth as she returns to her family’s Palm Springs home for Christmas and announces plans to publish a memoir that threatens to reopen old wounds and long-buried family secrets.
Funny, sharp, politically charged, and emotionally complex, the play earned widespread acclaim during its Broadway run and remains one of the most respected American dramas of the past two decades.
For Players Workshop, it represents exactly the kind of thoughtful, actor-driven work that has become a hallmark of the company’s programming.
The momentum continues beyond August.
October will bring Players Workshop’s first musical revue, produced in collaboration with the Collective Theater Company, marking an expansion of the company’s programming and a new chapter in its evolution.
Looking even further ahead, the beloved Diez Minutos Festival returns in 2027. The international ten-minute play competition invites playwrights from around the world to submit original works, with selected entries receiving full production in San Miguel. The upcoming theme, Small Spaces, feels particularly fitting for a city that has spent decades proving that creativity rarely depends on scale.
Producing quality theatre in San Miguel is never easy.
It is a labor of love sustained by volunteers, artists, directors, designers, actors, and audiences who believe that live theatre still matters.
Lola Smith understood that when she founded Players Workshop in 1982.
Richard Hochberg and Antonia Banewicz understand it today.
While visitors are always welcome, this story is ultimately for the people who live here. Many residents know San Miguel for its architecture, galleries, restaurants, and festivals. Fewer realize the depth of theatre being produced just a few blocks from the Jardín.
Players Workshop is not remarkable simply because it has survived for more than four decades.
It is remarkable because it reflects something that has always made San Miguel special: talented people arriving from around the world and choosing not to slow down.
They come here looking for a different pace of life.
What they often find is a second act.
And if this season is any indication, the show is far from over.
Other Desert Cities runs August 5 through 8 at the Santa Ana Theatre.
A curated monthly dose of lifestyle, culture, and rhythm from San Miguel.
