We were lucky to catch up with Kitten A. Round recently and have shared our conversation below.

Kitten A. , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

I knew I wanted to pursue a creative and artistic path professionally from the time I was very young. As far back as I can remember, I loved to sing, dance, act, and perform in every way possible. I loved being onstage. It was the place where I felt most like myself, and even as a child, it felt like where I was meant to be.

Some of my earliest memories are of being three years old, constantly dressed in a full ballet tutu, always ready to perform at a moment’s notice. I was so eager to be part of the action that I would even try to sneak onto the stage while other performances were happening. There is still a picture of me being escorted offstage in a leotard and tutu, completely committed to the moment. Around age eight, I told my mom I wanted taps put on all of my shoes so I could break into tap dancing whenever I felt like it. I performed for family during the holidays, and there are countless pictures of me dancing, posing, and playing dress-up as a child.

Looking back, dress-up was more than just play. It was one of my first introductions to performance, transformation, and gender expression. In many ways, it planted the seeds for the drag and theatrical work I would later embrace. As I grew up, I followed a path familiar to many performers: I did theater from a young age, took a wide variety of classes, and eventually attended Hollywood High School’s Performing Arts Magnet. I kept dancing wherever I could, whether in college classes or at local dance centers. Like many performers, I found myself in community theater and eventually in The Rocky Horror Picture Show with the Clinton Street Cabaret, the longest-running shadow cast in the world. I played numerous characters, always with the dream of one day playing Frank-N-Furter, a role that would later inspire an entire drag king persona of my own.

But if I had to identify the moment when my artistic path sharpened into something I knew I had to pursue professionally, it was when I attended my first burlesque show while finishing my degrees. I remember watching it and feeling an immediate, unmistakable sense of recognition: this is it. This is what I want to do. It brought together everything I had loved my whole life—movement, theatricality, transformation, humor, sensuality, and unapologetic self-expression. It felt like all the pieces of me had suddenly clicked into place.

At the time, though, my schedule and finances would not allow me to pursue it. So I waited. I held onto that feeling for years, until the right moment came, and when it did, I went for it completely. Shortly after my mother died in 2019, I enrolled in the Rose City School of Burlesque and began my burlesque journey in earnest. That choice carried both grief and determination. It felt like a way of claiming my life, my body, and my artistry with urgency and purpose.

Building a burlesque career during the pandemic was not easy, but I fought for it. I performed online in my kitchen doorway, transformed with curtains into a makeshift stage. I performed in blocked-off streets and in whatever spaces were available until the world began to open again. Even in the hardest circumstances, I kept showing up. That persistence confirmed what I had always known, from the little girl in the tutu to the adult stepping into burlesque: performance is not just something I love. It is who I am.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?

At my core, I am a performer, producer, educator, and community builder whose work lives in the worlds of burlesque and drag. My creative path has always been rooted in performance, but I found my home specifically in burlesque and drag because they gave me a space to bring together storytelling, theatricality, gender play, vulnerability, humor, and power in a way that felt completely authentic to me.

I came into this industry through a lifelong love of performance, and when I found burlesque, I immediately recognized it as a form that could hold all the parts of me. Since then, I have built a body of work that includes burlesque performance, drag performance, and drag king performance, as well as producing both drag and burlesque shows. My work is not just about entertainment, though performance is absolutely at the heart of it. It is also about expression, transformation, and creating spaces where people can feel seen.

In addition to performing and producing, I also teach. A major part of my work has been offering classes that address the effects of mental health, collective trauma, and stress on performers. This is something I care deeply about, because artists are often expected to keep creating and showing up without enough support or acknowledgment of what they are carrying. I have had the opportunity to teach on these topics at places including the Iowa Burlesque Convention, and I see that work as an important extension of my creative practice.

I also run Kitten Co-Labs, which is a project very close to my heart. Through it, I bring in out-of-town teachers, especially artists who are LGBTQ+, BIPOC, disabled, and otherwise underrepresented, to share their skills, teach classes, and build community. Creating opportunities for those voices to be centered is one of the things that feels most meaningful to me. I want my work to contribute not just to performance, but to access, connection, and a stronger creative community.

What sets me apart is that my brand is rooted in empowerment. I create for LGBTQ+ people, for bigger bodies, for the outcasts, for the people who have been made to feel like they are too much or not enough. My work is about making room for those people to take up space fully and unapologetically. I want audiences, students, clients, and fellow artists to know: this art is for you, too.

What I am most proud of is the way my work brings together performance, education, and community care. I am proud not only of the shows I create and the characters I embody, but of the spaces I help build—spaces where people can explore who they are, feel powerful in their bodies, and know they belong. More than anything, I want people to know that my work comes from a real place. It is bold, playful, and theatrical, but it is also deeply intentional. It is about visibility, liberation, and giving people permission to be fully themselves.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I have had to pivot more than once in both my personal life and my career, and those pivots have shaped not only who I am as a person, but also the kind of artist and brand I have become.

There was a long period in my life when I was not taking care of my mental health and was also struggling with substance use. Getting my life back on track took a great deal of honesty, work, and resilience. During that time, I focused on rebuilding a stable foundation for myself, including growing in my more conventional career and creating the structure I needed in order to eventually return to my art from a healthier, stronger place.

Another major turning point came after my mother died of cancer more than seven years ago. That loss changed me deeply, and it marked the beginning of another significant pivot in my life. In the aftermath of that grief, I found my way into burlesque and drag, and beginning that journey became part of how I reclaimed myself. It gave me a space for expression, transformation, healing, and connection at a time when I needed all of those things most.

These pivots have taught me just how resilient I am, but also how resilient my brand is. My work is not built on perfection or pretending life has been easy. It is built on honesty, survival, reinvention, and the courage to keep creating through hardship. I think that is something my fans connect with on a real level. They care about me as a person, and they respond to the ways I have been open about overcoming obstacles and continuing to grow.

I hope that by sharing that journey, I can help other artists who have had to pivot in their own careers or personal lives. So many people feel like a setback, a loss, or a difficult chapter means they have missed their chance. I want my story and my work to remind them that transformation is possible, that starting over is possible, and that some of the most powerful art can come from rebuilding yourself.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

My struggles with addiction and the loss of my mother both revealed how resilient I truly am. Each experience forced me to rebuild myself in a different way—first by fighting to take better care of my mental health and create stability in my life, and then by learning how to move through deep grief without losing my sense of purpose. Those chapters of my life were painful, but they also taught me strength, honesty, and perseverance. They shaped me into someone who keeps going, keeps growing, and continues creating even after profound loss and hardship.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @kitten_a_round
• Facebook: Kitt’n Around

Image Credits

first two pics are Aesthetic Shadows Photography as are the second, and 4th in the second submission

the other two are by Al Jones Photography

the pride one is by me.