The company Blue in the Right Way was founded in Chicago in 2019 by long-time collaborators Kévin V. Smith and Daiva Bhandari to create stylized, provocative theatre as visual art. The company established itself in France in 2025.

Actor, dancer, producer

Daiva Bhandari is a Chicago-based dance and theatre artist originally from southern Louisiana.

Daiva earned her BA in Drama from Loyola University, New Orleans and studied Modern Dance at Tulane University. In Chicago she has worked with The Neo-Futurists, Steppenwolf, Steep Theatre, Theatre Y, Manual Cinema, Pop Magic Productions, Emerald City Theatre and The Building Stage, and Daiva has performed the choreography of Michael Estanich, Lucy Vurusic-Riner, Corinne Imberski, Kelly Anderson and Erin Kilmurray.

Director, actor, writer, producer

Kevin is a French-American theatre artist whose queer deconstructionist approach to directing combines the surreal and the expressionistic to create daring and visually arresting abstract stagings.

Directing credits include James Joyce's Exiles (2011), Albert Camus' The Misunderstanding (2011), Euripides' Medea (2014), András Visky’s Juliet (2020), Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II (2021), Thomas Middleton’s Women Beware Women (2024), and Shulman and Smith’s The Tender Trap (2025).

Kevin's work has been called "stylized and imaginative" (Chicago Tribune), "in search of a new paradigm for what is considered acceptable theatre in America" (Chicago Critic), "startling and haunting" (Chicago Reader), and "as extraordinary in vision and delivery as it is provocative and captivating" (Chicago Stage Review). Kevin's 2020 production of Juliet at Theatre Y was featured in HowlRound for its Spanish-language supertitles and chorus of mothers and infants on stage. It was highly recommended by WTTW as, "a work of both real life and pure poetry."

Kevin is a four-time Non-Equity Joseph Jefferson Award-nominated actor, was named “Best Actor of the Year” by Chicago Stage Review, starred Off-Broadway in the notorious production of Jean Genet’s The Maids X 2, and has acted under Tony Award-winning directors Mary Zimmerman and David Cromer. Kevin graduated from Loyola University New Orleans in 2006 and has trained extensively in Viewpoints and Grotowski techniques.