We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Kirsten King. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Kirsten below.
Hi Kirsten, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.
As the proud daughter of a military family, I had the pleasure of growing up all over the world and one of my first memories of wanting to be a creative in a professional regard was when my family would go to The Soldier Shows on base. These were shows where the soldiers with talents like dancing, singing, acting, playing instruments, and other creative performance skills would put on an annual talent show and IT WAS AMAZING! I would always be so excited to go to the show every time no matter where we were in the world or what base we were stationed at and they were some of the first artistic inspirations to create a performance and arts based life and career.
I also very specifically remember seeing Phantom Of The Opera, which was one of my first professional shows that my family took me to at the Kennedy Center and it continues to be one of the pivotal moments that I knew I wanted to pursue a creative arts performance life. It’s so interesting the things we remember, but I very clearly remember feeling pulled to the edge of my chair when candles of the Phantom’s lair was reveled and the pit orchestra started to play the accompaniment to the song in the pipeline. I wanted to be up there so bad and knew it was only going to be a matter of time before the music would be starting to play for me. Still to this day when I’m on stage about to sing or when I’m off in the wings about to make my entrance, hearing the intro music for my song/scene is still one of my favorite moments.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
My name is Kirsten King and I’m excited to share a little about myself with you today. I’m an actor and improviser based out of Atlanta, I’m an arts educator through theatre and improv programming that I teach via public, private, charter, homeschool and online education communities along with theatres and various arts and community organizations. And I’m also the Creative Director, lead writer, and driving artistic voice for a creative marketing production team that provides out of the box marketing and advertising content for organizations, people, and products. I provide a unique and audacious marketing perspective that is entertaining and client-centered. I operate a multi-tiered youth & teen arts program, I teach improv and acting classes along with audition coaching, in-person and digitally and I offer corporate workshops in team building, confidence, public speaking, and communication, and I love it!
How’d I get started with my entertainment career? Well, I received my BFA degree from Auburn University and then studied at a summer theatre conservatory called Circle In The Square in Manhattan, NY on Broadway. And it’s actually pretty funny that I had a choice between pursuing a Theatre degree at Auburn University and a Tennis degree at Oglethorpe University, and though I clearly ended up pursing the theatre route, my first professional job after I finished my conservatory program was with Georgia Shakespeare, which operated out of Oglethorpe University, so I ended up crossing paths with the option I didn’t choose anyway!
I’m lucky enough to have improv be a significant part of my career and so I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the improv group that I’ve been a part of for almost 10 years, Dark Side Of The Room. We are an all-Black improv group based out of Atlanta and we show the audience all the deleted scenes of what the Black people were doing during traditionally “classic”, code for predominately white and often lacking diversity, movies. For example, think of Annie or Home Alone, where are all the Black people and what are they doing?! Well, we show you! I also want to give a shoutout to my comedy colleague and friend, Colin Mochrie, who I’ve had the pleasure of sharing multiple stages with over the years in the US and Canada.
I really love how in the creative arts career arena, I’ve been able to carve out a path for myself that is unique to not only what I love to do being stage and Shakespeare trained and transitioning my work into film & tv, but also being able to create space to support and promote the type of art I’d like to see more of. I’m really excited for some of the projects I have in the pipeline and if my future career variables are as awesome as my past, I have a lot to look forward to.
What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?
In my view, what society can do to best support artists is to pay us. Hire us, create with us, and pay us. Not only pay us , but pay us well. Creativity is often one of the main variables that most brands and companies are missing, because they’re so busy thinking inside of the box, so respect what we bring to the table just as you would all the other roles you’d hire for in your company. Prioritize having a creative on every team and in every room and pay them fairly generously. Many times in moments of trials and tribulation in the wake of something heavy, the world turns to creatives to replenish joy and levity and I hope that there can be a shift to include creatives on the front end as well, not just as an afterthought.
Often creatives, actors in particular coming up in their career, end up having to take on additional support jobs that help provide supplemental income for their creatives jobs, and it would be nice to see society provide sustainable jobs for us that allow us to be creatives that can stay creative in those professions and not trade in our creativity for a non-creative paycheck. So inject creativity into all professions by employing creatives and being a part of our journey by inviting us to join yours in respectable and mutually beneficial ways.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
I think that for me, one of the most rewarding aspect of being an artist who lives fully as a creative is that I can exist audaciously as myself. In life on this big blue ball in space, so many of us feel lost and like we have to change who we are and how we express ourselves in order to succeed, but when you know that you are anchored in truth, authenticity, and the ability to give very few “fu@ks” about what anybody else thinks about you, there is a true freedom in how you walk into each day. It’s very freeing. I like to say, “Stand up, Stand out, and Stand for Something.”
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @kirsten_king_official_
Image Credits
Brian Jones Photography Carole Rose (ColurWrk) Stacey Bode Photography Michael Justice (Hollywood Headshots)