Seattle Playwright Xan Herring to Remount TO THE ROOT for One Night
Xan Herring will present acclaimed solo performance TO THE ROOT in Seattle on April 25
Does your trauma (lowercase “t”) result from family, religion, or past relationships? How do you wrestle with the weight of familial expectation? Seattle-based playwright and multihyphenate creative Xan Herring analyzes this (and much, much more) in the special remounting of her autobiographical solo show To The Root, playing for one night only on Saturday, April 25, 2026, at 7:00 PM at Kerry Hall (710 E Roy Street in Capitol Hill).
Styled after other self-deprecating greats like Mike Birbigllia who merge comedy and theatrical storytelling (they just do it funnier, for more people, and more money), To The Root had its world premiere in October 2025 at Starstuff, a solo performance festival in Seattle. Both the world premiere and this remounting feature direction by Amanda Rountree.
To The Root is a love letter to the people who raised and shaped Herring: filled with cultural references, thoughtful questions, and the real true names of her family members. For real—you can Google all of them! Herring asks her audience to reflect upon the moral quandaries they encounter on the road to learning who they are and who they want to become. She'd rate it "little t" on the psychological trauma scale.
ABOUT XAN HERRING
Native Texan Xan Herring is an amateur playwright, poet, multihyphenate creative and all-around silly person who's done everything in the Hollywood Fringe (HFF) and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals (EFF) aside from the carpentry. Her play Sorry About My Friend, co-written with Rachel Scott, won the Encore Extension at the 2019 HFF, where it was optioned and adapted into a screenplay. Xan's writing career spans 30 years from her adolescent Aladdin fan fiction to her recent plays All Good, To The Root, and T1D, each exploring the complex dynamics of identity, community, family, and faith. When off the stage, Xan works as an Executive Assistant and Office Manager for Seattle Theatre Group where her love for the Seattle arts community has well and truly deepened.
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