Solo Performance Festival #5 continues! Tonight, the lovely and talented Yana Kesala presents her show, The Ukrainian Dentist’s Daughter, based on her own experiences as an immigrant. Tickets are $12 adv/$15 at the door; this show closes May 4.
1. Where did you grow up, and how did you end up where you are now?
I played Ophelia in college and fell in love with my Hamlet. He had grown up in Kirkland and so a friend and I ended up taking a road trip here to check out the area where my crush had grown up. Falling in love with Puget Sound was an unexpected surprise–I just felt at home with the energy in this place as I never had in any of the other places I had lived: Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, and London. Growing up in Chicago I had honestly never thought twice about Seattle: I associated it with grunge music and men in plaid. But here I am–a Greenlake dwelling coffee junkie who works at a fair-trade and organic chocolate factory to fund my theater addiction. Life is grand.
2. Which performance, song, play, movie, painting, or other work of art had the biggest influence on you and why?
Evelyn and the Polka King was a play I saw in the fall of 1993 at the Steppenwolf in the fourth grade. I have absolutely no idea why I loved it so much, and reviews I have looked up for that production rate it as mediocre as best. But man, did I adore it. The music and the jokes, the energy: they just all looked like they were having so much fun! I wanted to play! I grew up with my parents taking me to the Steppenwolf and the Goodman in Chicago, along with museum trips and opera outings. Being Ukrainian, loving the arts is just in your blood.
3. What skill, talent, or attribute do you most wish you had and why?
I wish I could wear lipstick without eating it all off or it ending up on my teeth.
4. What do you do to make a living? Describe a normal day.
My normal day changes all the time. Right now I’m a tour guide and work in the retail store at Theo Chocolate, the fair-trade organic chocolate factory in Fremont. I work there daytimes four days a week and on my days off from there I assistant teach with Macha Monkey Productions at Hawthorne Elementary in South Seattle: we’re working with 4th and 5th graders to guide them in the writing and production of plays based on civil and labor rights issues. Free time outside of that lately has been committed to the writing, editing, rehearsing, and promotion of my solo show. Not all of these activities pay me right now…but it’s spring, and I’m sowing the seeds for a (hopefully!) bountiful harvest in the coming months.
5. Why solo performance? What made you decide to pursue this show in this form?
February of 2009 I toured to Australia with theater simple. We performed multiple shows over nine weeks and I got to see a part of the world I never had before. I made some great friends that were cut from the same piece of cloth that I am, despite being born and raised 7,000 miles away. I couldn’t leave without knowing that I’d be back someday. I had also been really inspired by all the productions I had seen in Australia and at the Edmonton Fringe in Canada, where I had toured with theater simple the summer before. The chances that another opportunity for me to travel internationally with a great show and theater were highly unlikely…so I decided to change the odds. Creating my own touring show with just me as writer, director, and performer meant fewer people to pay. Much of it was a business decision. The majority of it, though, sprouted from a desire to create the perfect role for myself. Every actor can relate to the feeling of constantly trying to be the solution to the problem when you walk into the audition room. In The Ukrainian Dentist’s Daughter, I am the solution: this role was literally written for me and my strengths. Writing this play also prompted me to interview my mother and get all her amazing life stories on paper in a cohesive and shareable way. She’s a cool lady. I like her a lot. I’m super excited for her to see this show inspired by her life.
