KQED's Forum Real Life Couple Jimmy Smits and Wanda De Jesús, Play Husband and Wife in Berkeley Rep’s ‘All My Sons’
Feb 27, 2026
David Mendizábal, Berkeley Rep director who reframes classics through Latino perspectives. Wanda De Jesús, veteran actor bringing personal migration history to Kate. Jimmy Smits, seasoned performer playing Joe. They discuss reimagining All My Sons around a Puerto Rican family, casting and race, moral consequences of the American Dream, and how real-life partners navigate intense onstage relationships.
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
Reimagining A Classic Through Puerto Rican Lens
- David Mendizábal reframed All My Sons by centering a Puerto Rican family without changing Arthur Miller's 1946 text.
- He used cultural lensing to surface race, ethnicity, and class while preserving the play's moral questions about individual versus community responsibility.
Operation Bootstrap Shaped Kate's Backstory
- Wanda De Jesús connects the play to Operation Bootstrap and her great-grandmother's migration to the mainland.
- She used family history to inform Kate's drive to build capital and pass it on to future generations.
Act One's Buoyancy Enables the Moral Punch
- Jimmy Smits and Wanda emphasize Miller's structure: a sunny, ordinary Act One that devolves into moral collapse across Acts Two and Three.
- Rehearsals mapped that one-two punch so revelations land with growing emotional intensity.