Argentinian playwright Maia Novi is rebooting the immigrant story

The stage is dark and the music blares. A woman appears in the center, wearing all white, and begins to move, waving her arms wildly. She matches the music’s spirit. Her movements could be a dance or an expression of a deeper emotion. “My name is Maia,” she says. “And this is a true story.” A man wearing a bug mask joins her, introducing himself as the acting bug. He throws her to the ground, spits on her, and bites her neck, the moment strangely erotic, wholly shocking. The audience gasps and the story begins. It doesn't let up. 

Maia Novi is the writer and playwright of “Invasive Species,” an off-Broadway production that concluded its run on June 30th. The show has been a viral sensation. Its production is bare-bones, but the lighting, music, and performances are outlandish. Underneath all the loudness, the story is simple. We follow Maia, an Argentinian immigrant who wants to be a Hollywood actress. After a stressful experience at the School of Drama at Yale University, she is admitted to a children’s psychiatric ward by accident. This story runs parallel to Maia’s recollections of her life, taking us back to her childhood, her family, the stressors in the university, and her experience in America, a place that is hellbent on shaping her into someone new. 

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Novi speaks to HOLA! on the phone a day after the show concluded. Her voice is hoarse – probably due to the gargantuan feat of her performance, but she reveals she was out with her friends, celebrating. She speaks in Spanish, her Argentinean cadence thick and musical. I share that I watched the play at 5 pm and that the first thought I had after leaving the theater was how could she do it all over again at 8 pm.

“How does that work?” I ask. Novi laughs and says that the key lies in staying inside the theater. 

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“Invasive Species” began as a production in The Tank, a small theater and a rare space in New York that provides a home for emerging artists. It then moved to an off-Broadway production at the Vineyard Theater. Over the past months, the show has been marketed brilliantly, with strange clips making their way online featuring Novi and other cast members jumping around, making memes, and teasing bits of the story. The videos convey the energy of the work yet retain an air of mystique. It’s a gamble that paid off, with the performances selling out and dozens of celebrities attending the show and wearing its merch. “In theater, this doesn’t happen,” says Novi. “It’s like a pop band.”

One of her idols, Michaela Coel, attended the play. Novi shares that Coel seemed moved by the work and that she had some words of advice. 

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Novi comes from a talented and off-beat generation of Yale Drama School graduates, many of whom worked with her on “Invasive Species.” Jeremy O. Harris, known for his work in “Slave Play,” the movie “Zola,” and cameos in shows like “Gossip Girl,” is one of New York’s biggest art personalities and one of the show’s producers. Other collaborators include director Michael Breslin and the play’s producer and dramaturg Amauta Firmino, who’s also Novi’s partner. One of her best friends, Louisa Jacobson, is the play’s assistant director. 

“I made all of this with my friends,” Novi says. “There’s a language that exists that saves you so much when creating something. When there are time constraints you need pillars of communication that allow you to express things that you can’t communicate with words.” 

Immigration narratives are complicated beasts. A discerning audience wants representation in stories that echo their lives and experiences. They don’t want representation for representation’s sake, an irritating phenomenon that’s becoming increasingly common. “Invasive Species” manages to accomplish various things at once; it’s a story about being an outsider, about pursuing a career in the arts that many don’t respect, about mental health and family trauma. But it’s also a story about immigrating to America, and how hostile that particular experience can be. 

“When I was done with school, I applied to a bunch of residences,” Novi says. “All of the grants ask for previous credits and create this common dilemma for artists: ‘How do I get my foot in the door?’” 

“After all of the grants said no to me, they gave the grants to the same people that are making a basic identity play,” she continues. “There’s a pattern there that’s not good and it’s a bit toxic where I see all of the plays talking about the same themes.”

Here, she gets passionate. “All of these plays that have come out are based on archetypes that paint Latin America as this giant sausage made up of the same things. It’s the grandmas!” she said. “Grandmas must be rolling in their graves. Leave grandmas alone! Stop. It’s beans, it’s grandmas, it’s mangoes. Always these elements that are taken so seriously. Where are the Latin Americans that don’t exoticize the place where they come from? Latin American literature is very surreal. Why can’t we have that here?” 

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Through our conversation, Novi asks where I’m from and what I do for work. I share that I’m from Venezuela and that I’m a journalist. She asks if I feel strange at times when expressing myself in English and I agree. I say that the worst part is that I’ve been living here for so long that I sometimes have trouble expressing myself in Spanish. She knows exactly what I'm talking about. 

“There’s this contradictory feeling of having a dream, building a life in a new place. To want it, to want it, to want it, and at the same time, to feel like you’ll never get there,” she says. “What is this thing that I want? Where do I want to go? What is this thirst? What is this success that I’ve sacrificed so much for?” 

Novi doesn’t have the answers, but she's asking the right questions.