How did you first get started?

I have always gone to Art schools and been very dramatic (if you know me, you are completely shocked by that). 5-year-old Kim was not very good at making friends and talking to people of my age, so our Lunch Room Monitor saw this and decided to hook me up with the three most popular girls in my class to sit next to for lunch. They were so nice to me and I got so excited thinking I had finally found friends. The next day, while I was standing in the lunch line to get my school-provided lunch, the “Gretchen” of the clique (If you get this reference, we can be best friends) told me that the “Regina” had saved me the seat right next to her. My first missed red flag (they all packed their lunches and wouldn’t be caught dead with a school lunch). When I got to the table with the connected stools, the stool next to Regina had been sawed completely away, leaving 5-year-old me devastated as they laughed at me. Now I know what you’re thinking, how does this get me involved in theatre?

As I said, I went to Art School. After curricular clubs, like the theatre group (Called the Bakers Dozen, which is clever giving our school’s name) could only be joined when you were in 3rd grade. But our teacher was casting the Christmas Pageant and decided that the reindeers would be played by kindergarteners. I heard “Regina” and the other mean girls talking, and heard “Regina” boast that she was going to be Rudolph and they could be her backups. 5-year-old me was petty (a trait I have cultivated over the years) and decided that it would be me who played Rudolph and she could be my backup.

So I was cast as Rudolph, with a blinking blue nose (it was the 90s, I’m old, and a Cleveland Public School so, budgets). From the first moment I came on stage I knew that was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.