We were lucky to catch up with Kevin Aoussou recently and have shared our conversation below.

Kevin, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

I feel as if I have always desired to be an artist with a creative foundation strong enough to not limit my ability to collaborate with any other creative. I believe in the individual artists’ creative voice.  I believe that no one should feel required to minimize themselves, and by extension their ideas, to have the right to be part of a process/project.

That belief is spurred by a curiosity: Why do people do the things they do the way they do it?

I was privileged enough to have teachers who never put shackles on my creative spirit when I was a young actor.  As a high schooler, I would read An Actor Prepares by Stanislavsky, imagining what it means to train as an actor. My curiosity pulled me to Hamlet auditions as a freshman in college. This started a journey during my early academic career which blessed me with mentors such as Jerry Colbert, Kara Wooten, and Chris O’neill who valued freedom and commitment in the craft. These mentors gave me the opportunity to learn by giving me space to fail. Even though I was young and raw, they never limited the roles I was allowed to play, and always worked to push me to do new things. The words “Just try it, I’ll tell you if I don’t like it” still ring in my ear anytime I have a new impulse.

Another pivotal moment in my training was the Fall of 2016, when I studied abroad at the Moscow Art Theater through the National Theater Institute. The training I received and the theater I saw shifted my perspective and belief in the possibilities of theater, teaching me true respect for its expansiveness. I started to wonder about the respect I hold for myself as an actor, the respect I hold towards the craft, and my relationship to training and my beliefs around arts education. I questioned what it means to be a full time actor, worries of sustainability and flexibility creeping into my mind. My time in Moscow ignited the growing fire in my heart and cemented my desire to seek out a new creative and educational challenge.

In the summer of 2023, I finished my time at Northwestern University as a member of the second ever MFA Acting cohort.  In the MFA Acting program, I found an environment that allowed me to define my artistry for myself and establish a process specific to my needs.  I had many wonderful teachers such as Dr. Cristal Chanelle Truscott, Stan Brown, Sandra Marquez, Mark Frost, and Shana Cooper who gave us tools and ignited curiosities that have guided me to embracing process, myself, and patience.

Looking back on how I learned to do the things I do, I’m forever grateful to my family, teachers, and mentors for their hands and voices as they guided me towards my truth- the stars in the night sky that my ship used to set its course.   When I look back on it all, I don’t know what I could change. I don’t know if I could have sped up the process at all, because I was learning lessons every time I faced a setback, and those setbacks were the setups for my next success.  The skills essential for me are empathy, communication, persistence, confidence, and the curiosity to learn as much as possible. The road to get up the mountain isn’t a path anyone can explain to you, because only you can experience your path. The more training and time I spend as an actor, the more I am pushed towards creating a career path for myself that is sustainable and creatively fulfilling.  I spent my time in school looking to collaborate and form new working relationships, and that process has followed me into postgraduate life as I juggle the responsibilities of being an actor and the founder of The Local LAb Co., a new organization focused on collaboration and community building.

My path has influenced who I am and why I do the things I do.  I can look back and say that the tools I gained were because of the circumstances I was in. I needed these tools because I worked 30 hours a week, went to school taking 18 credit hours , and was also in rehearsals for 20+hrs a week. I was a workhorse who had to make up time, and I was greedily snatching up every opportunity to grow. I don’t think that’s different from anyone else in any field that wants to attain a high level of what they do.  From athletes, to essential workers, to activists, to parents, battling the reality of life as you snatch up any opportunity to learn more, is how we learn the way that works best for us to do the things we want to do. For me, the key has been to find the things that work for me and make me care about the process again. I find that I spent years going to  schools to learn how to do things “correctly”, but only I can teach myself how to do things the way I want to do them.  My path has been through school, amateur projects, free projects, my projects.  My path to doing what I do was piecing together my personal process, by looking at my needs, then taking the parts that worked for me and leaving the rest.

Kevin, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Hi! My name is Kevin Aoussou. I was born in the Ivory Coast, I grew up in Charlotte, NC, and now I call Chicago home. I’m an alumni of the National Theater Institute (MATS ‘16), of Winthrop University (2018), and Northwestern University (MFA in Acting 2023).
I’m an actor, producer, director, activist, researcher, collaborator, organizer, lover, dreamer, ruler breaker, reflector, forgiver, believer. I’m passionate about demystifying the creative process by personalizing and simplifying process. My ideal is to find the alignment of artist agency and collaborative endeavors.
I am the founder of The Local Lab Co. an organization that emphasize Community, Collaboration, and Co-Liberation by developing new works in tandem with community experiences. The Local Lab Co. as a community centered producing organization emphasizes process and time as tools needed to foster community and create lasting impact. Every project we develop is in response to a creative/collaborative question around possibility, or in response to a direct community need.

To me, the job of an Actor is to be a student of life experiences, and that study has turned me into a researcher of the human experience. I research the possibilities of community sharing to generate content focused on the intersection of performance, possibility, and change. Leading with vulnerability and honesty guides my research goals of using experience sharing to bridge the gaps between us and our neighbors. This is how I find the clearest and most applicable conversations for the community where I am trying to impact change. By creating a space where our experiences and actions can define who we are and what we want, rather than the labels placed on us by society.

As an African immigrant who is perceived as a Black American, I’m sober to the reality of perspective and projection that comes from people having a lack of exposure to the experiences of other people in their community. That experience inspires me to imagine theater as an institution generating conversations through art, actively engaged in the growth and health of our community. It inspires me to imagine a theater that looks to its community and its neighbors as fuel for how we plan, create, and develop the richest way to build the bridges that support us all. How we treat our neighbors is the way our neighbors will treat us. Daniel Banks, Co-founder of DNA WORKS shares this quote by Yavilah Mcloy “We have to create spaces for people to fall in love with each other.” I believe in creating art that starts from a space of community, vulnerability, and reflection. We are connected in an ever expanding circle of shared experience. The cultural landscapes artists are exploring now, that we explored then, and that we explored way back when, are all generated from our experiences as humans existing in relationship with each other. How do the stories we tell engage us to learn from the past, in the present, to imagine a new future? How do we find the threads that connect us all? With art that is generated by desires to understand and share experiences. Theater that sews those threads, quilting our experiences together.

What stories we share, how we share those stories, why we share those stories, who we share those stories to, and when we share the stories must be in line with the voiced experience of our community. I believe that’s how we take the institution of the “Theater” and transform it into an experience of Community. My goal is to take the theater away from solely being a spectator sport, and turning it into a community event at every level. Making collaboration for change a community engaged event, thus leading to a shift in mentality by modeling a culture that demonstrates the necessity of community.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

Any moment someone is able to say “You’ve opened my eyes to a new way of thinking” I feel like I’ve actually done my job. I believe that as artists we get the opportunity to create moments where people can have new experiences. In the theater, movies, in a museum, in an art gallery, every moment of art being shared is an opportunity to impact someone’s perception of reality. I was lucky enough to have experiences in my last show where it was a young girls first time going to the theater ever.  Hearing the first time gasps of joy and wonder of someone who’s imagination has been opened up to a world of possibility is incredibly fulfilling.  The audience being changed and altered for the better from being in community with the artists is the most rewarding experience. The aspect of creating is my only need, but the biggest gifts possible is when the work I do isn’t “for me”. My goal, always, is to make the person watching  tilt their head a little to the left and say “I hadn’t thought about it that way before!” and i don’t think there can be a more rewarding feeling than making that happen.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

I dream of process. I dream of development and incubation. I dream of community and artists being interwoven. I dream of dialogue and development that is a self-sustaining ecosystem of creative generation. I dream of artists building up a neighborhood/community by developing new work in response to that neighborhood. I dream of a space where artists are able to escape the pressures of expectation and are allowed to be in creation for the sake of creation. I dream of creating, not for labor, but for joy. I dream of theater as a tool to teach empathy. I dream of art as a tool to expose others to new experiences. I dream of a world where we create because of the surplus of love we have for each other, rather than solely for the sake of survival. I am driven by my desire for something so different than what we are forced to do now.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://kevinaoussou.squarespace.com/
• Instagram: @AYOKev247 @thelocallabco

Image Credits
Kira Calvaresi BLUELINE Tim Fuller Marcel Iam Wide Eyed Studios