​Tara Blau Smollen is a San Francisco Bay Area playwright, director and actor, drawn to reimagining classical works and amplifying underrepresented voices onstage. Her plays center around questions of power, love and identity through a lens of cultural and historical complexity.

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Her plays include: The Gull, an African American reimagining of Chekhov’s The Seagull (Finalist: New Works of Merit Playwriting Contest, Stanley Drama Award, Kaplan Playwright Award) and will be produced as part of Shotgun Players’ Champagne Reading Series in June 2026. Sisters, a retelling of Chekhov’s Three Sisters (The O’Neill NPC semifinalist 2025; Lifeline Theatre BIPOC Adaptation Workshop finalist); and The Soledad Brothers, a one-act play, part of Abingdon Theatre Company (NYC) Raise the Page, Uplift the Word: A Festival of Short Plays. She is a member of the Mill Valley Playwrights’ Lab and the Pear Playwrights' Guild.

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As a director, Tara has worked with Theater Lunatico, Cinnabar Theater Company, 6th Street Playhouse, Porchlight Theater Company, and Contra Costa College. Her production of Jen Silverman’s The Moors was named one of SF Datebook’s Best Plays of 2024. She is also the co-founder and former Artistic Director of the award-winning Porchlight Theater Company in Ross, California.

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A proud member of Actor's Equity Association (credited as Tara Blau), she has appeared in over 70 productions, including: Amanda in Private Lives, Masha in Three Sisters, and Merteuil in Dangerous Liaisons. Some of the theaters she has worked at include: Berkeley Rep, The Aurora Theater Company, Porchlight Theater Company, Sacramento Theater Company, Cinnabar Theater Company, Playground, Pacific Alliance Stage, Golden Thread and TheaterWorks to name a few. She is the recipient of three Dean Goodman Awards for Lead Actress in a Play and two SFBATCC nominations for Lead Actress in a Play.

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Tara is the co-founder of Playwright Power: The First 100 Days, a national playwriting initiative encouraging playwrights to respond to the current political moment, culminating in a production with Open Space Arts in Chicago, which she will direct. She is also the co-writer of the feature screenplay Roamer with longtime collaborator LeAnne Rumbel, under their production company R3p Productions.

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Her work is driven by an interest in expanding the canon—creating stories that invite audiences and performers to see themselves, reflected with complexity and humanity onstage. 

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She holds a BA in Theater and English from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and an MFA in Acting from the National Theater Conservatory in Denver.