Heads up fans: the play is NOT based on the hit Netflix show — it’s vice versa!
By Sarah A. Spitz
Los Angeles, CA (The Hollywood Times) 3/20/26
There’s a special kind of discipline required to be completely prepared for a job you may never get to do.
Rosie Simon knows this. As an understudy (technically a “standby”) on the North American tour of Kim’s Convenience, the Korean – Canadian actress spends her nights in the wings ready to cover not one but two roles — Janet, the sharp-witted daughter, and Umma, the mother — while the leads appear on stage. It’s a job that demands full preparation with almost no guarantee of visibility.
“So much of our work is invisible,” Simon said in a recent Zoom interview. “You don’t get to share it with the audience every night. We don’t get the benefit of repetition or momentum. We are paid to stay sharp and ready.” And she is, not least because she’s already been part of the touring company of Kim’s Convenience.
The tour, which brings Ins Choi’s celebrated stage play to the Music Center’s Ahmanson Theatre, arrives in a city with one of the largest Korean communities in the United States, and anticipation — both inside and outside the production — is running high.
For those who discovered the story through the beloved Netflix series, it may be a surprise (as it was to me) that Kim’s Convenience originated as a play, premiering at Toronto’s Soulpepper Theatre Company before touring across Canada, generating enormous word of mouth, and eventually inspiring the CBC adaptation that introduced the Kim family, its corner store and the cast of quirky neighbors to the world.
In Kim’s Convenience, Mr. Kim works hard to support his wife and children with his Toronto convenience store. As he evaluates his future, he faces both a changing neighborhood landscape and the gap between his values and those of his Canada-born son and daughter. Playwright Choi calls Kim’s Convenience his “love letter to his parents and to all first-generation immigrants who call Canada their home.”
Simon’s own history with the production stretches back nearly a decade. Living in Vancouver in 2015, she submitted an audition when Soulpepper held open calls as they toured across the country. She impressed playwriter/actor/producer Choi himself, who encouraged her to relocate to Toronto, saying, “There’s lots of work here for Asian actors. Let’s work together. Come be a part of this large community.”
So she moved there. By 2017, she was performing in an Eastern Canada tour that included a residency off-Broadway in New York.
“People loved it,” she recalls. “That’s where my journey with the show began,” as the daughter in the play, Janet.
Now she’s back for the first time as a standby, covering both Janet (the daughter) and Umma (the mother) which requires her to slip between generations, donning a wig and aging makeup to inhabit Umma. She laughs describing the logistical gymnastics of it all and enjoys the stretch required as an actress to play both roles. “I give Umma a certain physicality to age her a bit.” Imagine the complications when sometimes, “I have to do both roles simultaneously!”
The play did not originate from the CBC TV series, which ran for five seasons (and is still on Netflix now). At a brisk 75 to 80 minutes with no intermission, it unfolds over the course of a single extraordinary day inside the Kim family’s store. “It’s comedy, it has so much heart,” she says, “but it also has a great deal of depth — sadness, loss, legacy. It takes this family and their whole lives leading up to this moment, sticks them in that store, and puts it all under a magnifying glass.”
This tour also features multiple actors sharing the role of Appa, the patriarch — including Choi himself, who now plays the father after playing the son (Jung), and James Yi, who appeared as Appa in other staging and portrayed Jimmy Young on the TV show. Simon finds that adapting to the the actors’ differing approaches in the role keeps her on her toes. “It’s them bringing their own personalities to the role,” she says. “It’s so interesting to see each of their interpretations of this character and how they tell the same story with their own personal flairs. It keeps you listening. You can’t go on autopilot.”
Although almost all of the cast is Korean-Canadian, the accents they affect are not Korean. “No one in our company actually has a Korean accent as their regular speaking voice,” Simon say. We have varying degrees of Korean language speakers throughout our cast, some with none, some basically fluent. So we kind of range all over, but no one actually has the accent they’re bringing to the stage.”
As for what the show means to Korean and Asian audiences — particularly in a city like Los Angeles — Simon says she’s heard from Korean Canadians whose own families owned convenience stores, and walked out of the theatre saying it felt like their lives on stage.
And she believes the story reaches far beyond any single community. “At the end of the day, it’s about a family,” she says. “It’s about love, figuring out pasts and futures and legacy. Those are not specific to Koreans. Those are specific to all people.”
After the tour wraps in San Diego in mid-June, Simon plans to pivot toward film and television — and, she adds with some resolve, back toward singing. Trained in musical theatre before her years in Toronto reshaped her path, she’s ready to reclaim that part of her instrument. “That was one of my goals for 2026,” she says. “To get back to using my voice more.”
For now, though, she’s watching, waiting, and staying ready — because in theatre, as in life, you never quite know when it’s your turn to step into the spotlight.
Kim’s Convenience plays at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles March 21-April 19. For tickets visit CenterTheatreGroup.org.
