Conversations with Kai Chisholm

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kai Chisholm.

Hi Kai, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
A very vague question with an even larger answer. To be brief, I had an apprenticeship with the One year Lease Company in Brooklyn, NY around February 2020. For the following summer of that year, I was supposed to travel to a village in Northern Greece with a group of talented and upcoming actors for a month. In that month we would have built a show from the ground up and would have performed it completely in Greek. At the time, I was a sleep-deprived acting student working on my Classic play “As You Like It”, gearing up for my graduation play, and writing my scholarship essay for said Apprenticeship in Greece. And then the pandemic hit. At first, it was a long weekend off from school, and that weekend turned into a week, and that week turned into a month. Two months. Three. My apprenticeship was frozen—canceled, actually—due to the severity of the outbreak in the Mediterranean and I was back in my hometown of Douglasville, GA and living with my parents. I graduated over a Zoom meeting with my Associate’s in Occupational Studies alone in my parents’ living room. I’d been displaced from the city I thought I would spend the rest of my life in, removed from the welcoming halls of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and placed right back where I thought I’d escaped from. Today, I am far from that place.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
It has certainly NOT been a smooth road. Ha. I think—in this industry especially—it is difficult to find the light on the path. Nevermind the pandemic we live through. The biggest struggle was finding my foothold in Atlanta. After all, I thought I’d be living in New York and doing it the “New York way” bussing tables and commuting buses and subways but… No, it hasn’t been a smooth road. Before I graduated, I was grossly depressed. Sure, I had my friends from high school (because they were just as displaced as I was) but I was not making any money and being home was a challenge. To relieve myself of some stress, I picked up a warehouse job—Monday-Friday, 3:30 PM to midnight—I was working as a laborer for a Home Depot supply chain on the westside of Atlanta. I was not at my best there. Granted, my employers—specifically my HR manager Angela Nakashima– were exceptional in working with me and my dreams. At the time, I wanted to go back to school for my Bachelor’s immediately rather than later, so we cut a deal—I work Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday and then I’d get to be free to do whatever I needed to do. That worked for a bit until the health issues bubbled up. Migraines, medication for those migraines, calling out because I could not face a day in the warehouse without sacrificing my mental and physical well-being for a check. It was the hardest part of my journey, working there. Everything felt so far away. Sure, I had some really amazing jobs in that period. I worked with fellow AADA alums on a virtual production called “This Isn’t About You”, I directed three podcast plays with The Garden of Voices Podcast Troupe (Brussel Sprouts, The Graveyard Shift, and Breakz); for the holidays, I worked as an entertainer and actor at Stone Mountain Park and I wrote an article for the ReSisters Journal. All of it stands in the shadow of a warehouse. I was drained and felt like I could barely see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I found the Tiny Theater Company while I was mundanely scrolling through Instagram. I read that they were looking to put together a production of Shakespeare’s Othello. Before I knew it, I was sending emails to Cyd Prather, the director. A cover letter, headshot, resume, and twenty-four hours later, I was at the table-read for Othello as an ensemble member. As I sat there playing and chatting along with my colleagues, I realized that I had to leave Home Depot. I did not know when or how, but my time there was coming to a definite end as the night went on. Was I really going to forego financial security? Would I ever recover from it, if I did? What am I going to tell my parents? All of these questions rose against a deciding factor: my health and happiness.

So, I looked for a new job all while still working at Home Depot in the mornings and going to Othello rehearsals in the evenings. Eventually, my break came as the cast was preparing for tech week. I’d received an interview to work as a bartender for Guac Y Margys by Piedmont Park, a second location to the original on the Beltline. Suddenly, I could see the road ahead of me.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Everything that I am goes into my work. Before training and even during my training, I had a hard time separating play from reality. Now, I struggle to get through a scene without laughing at the circumstances I find myself in while in character. This training makes me a better teacher, which is a career goal I hope to attain in the next decade. While I was attending the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, I learned about Meisner, Alexander, Stanislavski, Lecoq, Hagen, and Linklater. As I was learning these techniques, I played a range of characters, truthfully living in their given circumstances, and gained priceless knowledge about myself, others, and the worlds we inhabit. This insight is invaluable to an actor. It gives us our power on stage and behind a camera. We tell our stories through our bodies and what would be without it. For me, being able to tell my story is like therapy. I feel as though it can be really easy to deem actors as fame-seeking artists but this is inaccurate. To be able to release what I feel in art is a gift that I will gladly share with anyone who cares to receive it.

More than being an actor, I am a writer at heart and a director on the side. My actor’s training only ameliorates my ability to storytell. As a writer, I can write truthfully to a character and their circumstances. As a director, I can examine the bigger picture while still focusing on the finer details of character interactions, motivations, and objectives.

Still though, it is difficult for me to truly think of anything that I’m super proud of. That being said, I am getting better at recognizing my successes. For my directorial debut, the playwright of Brussel Sprouts, Janet Neipris, gave her highest compliments to the production. “Out of all the productions I have seen of this show, none have brought all that I wrote to life quite like you all have done it. It’s melancholy, it’s comedy, everything you all have done here is just what I wrote it to be.” These words I hold close to my heart. I could have just died, honestly. I’m proud to beat my depression with the accomplishments I’ve made thus far but it’s only a matter of time before the shadow comes back to make those achievements seem a little less. These feelings never last. It comes in seasons. Whenever I slip back, I get busy. I search for opportunities and, if I cannot find any, I create my own whether it requires me reaching out to my Discord buddies and asking, “Anyone want to play D&D?” or writing poems that will never see the light of day. Creation is my life-blood. I would much rather make something than make nothing at all.

We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
For me, success is creativity and happiness. Like, “Oh, I feel gross. Lemme write something so awful, so completely full of angst and drama that I will look at it tomorrow morning and go ‘Oh… oh my word. What was I thinking?’” Success to me is making sure that I am taking care of myself and my business, making sure that I am eating healthy and stretching often, taking the time to read a good book or manga and watch TV shows and movies that fulfill me. Even hanging out with friends, old and new, and going to work and registering for classes next semester is a success. As for the dreaded part of adulting, the scheduling and going to your doctor’s appointments (as stressful as it is), is an achievement and betters myself and my future. Enriching my life is all the success that I can see and that is how I would define it.

Contact Info:

• Email: kaichisholmbooking@gmail.com
• Instagram: @_kaichisholm
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClAOeGOBKSRD-7h8TvTOA_w/featured

Image Credits
T’Shauna Henry (@creativittea)
Karina Padron (@karina._.padron)
@mo_wizzy_
Kai Chisholm