Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Sasha Kasper. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Sasha, thanks for joining us today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?
I knew I wanted to pursue a creative career around June 2021, At the time, I had recently moved to Los Angeles and was working as a Immigration Case Writer at a Los Angeles based immigration firm, but I was burnt out. I was living next to an elementary school and each day I saw the absolute unadulterated joy that the kids expressed while out for recess. It sounds quite cliché, but after seeing this day in and day out I came to a realization that I couldn’t remember the last time I felt that way. At that point, I had been working in the immigration field for roughly four years to determine if I truly wanted to go to law school and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to get my J.D. After seeing the 24/7 commitment and availability of the firm partners for their clients at multiple firms, I decided the path ultimately wasn’t for me. It was not a quality of life that I desired. I decided it was time to take the risk and try to pursue a creative career, something I had never done before. Since I was in Los Angeles I thought, “Why not acting?”.
Sasha, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I currently work as a Behavioral Health Consultant, which essentially means I help substance abuse treatment centers, mental health rehabilitation centers, and other behavioral health related facilities become in network with insurance providers. My ultimate goal is for acting to become my full-time job, but I am fortunate and grateful to have my current position in the interim, as the career path of an actor is quite lucrative and marked with financial instability. What I do believe is an asset to my acting is my life experience outside of the creative/acting world. I didn’t work in a field where you are judged on your appearance and told your look doesn’t fit for a role, even after you put in the work for the audition. I didn’t do the work and present it to my teacher and hope that my character’s “vision” or “truth” came through in the performance. There was always a concrete quantitative answer for my jobs, which is why acting in the beginning was quite difficult for me. What do you mean there’s no “right” way to do this scene? How do I make a performance look truthful? But I have nothing but joy through navigating this new field and I’m only starting.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
The current goal driving my acting career is to prove to myself that I can be a good storyteller by providing a performance to people that makes them feel connection and understanding, even if the story is all over the place. There are so many movies I’ve seen where the context of story is lost in it’s direction (or lack there of) but I will never forget the emotional impact the actor’s performances had on me. If I can make someone believe what my character is going through is real and of truth, then I know that I made the right choice when I changed my career path. This will be proven by being in more projects, whether that be through theater or film. There seems to be little time and yet such space to explore life through different characters you can play, why not just jump in head first and see how much you can make them swim?
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
While taking a year off from college due to ill health, I was diagnosed with severe depression and then subsequently myalgic encephalomyelitis, also called chronic fatigue syndrome or ME/CFS. ME/CFS is a chronic neuroimmune disease that has a variety of symptoms, but most common is overwhelming fatigue that is not improved by rest. Safe to say that I love the taste of coffee, even though it does nothing for me physically.
Before I took the year off from college, I was experiencing intense suicidal ideation and then I physically started to not be able get out of bed and go to class. I had gone to see about nine different specialists before I was diagnosed with ME/CFS. There is no cure and it is very misunderstood and under researched one as well, However, I was able to manage my depression and subsequently learn to live with ME/CFS to go back to college the following year. I graduated from UC Davis in Spring 2018, earning all A’s my final year, which I was very proud of. I even was able to volunteer for the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline as a Crisis Counselor and give back to the organization that I had called back in college. Today, I live a life where I can manage my ME/CFS while pursing acting, I privilege I never take for granted.
Contact Info:
Image Credits
Cory Barker Tamara Tihanyi