"One creative act can cause a
torrent to break through stone."
~Clarissa Pinkola Estés
"One creative act can cause a torrent to break through stone."
~Clarissa Pinkola Estés
“One creative act can cause a torrent to break through stone.”
~Clarissa Pinkola Estés
kala smith
Kala is a mother, communal ritual theatre designer, actor, and teacher. Initiated by complex grief as a teenager, she found refuge in theatre, somatics, and nature, which began her lifelong inquiry into theatre-making for collective transformation.
As an actor, Kala’s empathic portrayal of edge-dwellers led her to develop, and perform in new socio-political plays with NYC theatre visionaries, including Joe Chaikin, Adrienne Kennedy, and Arthur Penn, who directed her in a two-year process that invites the audience into a more relational experience.
Enlivened by this non-linear, ensemble approach, Kala founded Visible Theatre in 2000 to work outside commercial constraints and center untold stories. She learned alongside artists with and without disabilities in weekly labs and developed new plays and four True Story Projects, which debunked marginalizing tropes. Visible received NYSCA, DCA, and NEA grants and created intersectional happenings in shelters, colleges, NY City Hall, storefronts, and sometimes, theaters. Devising theatre for social change led Kala to a theatre faculty position at Johns Hopkins University in support of their Department of Arts & Sciences mission to humanize future leaders.
By 2010, Kala was a mama to three and re-launched Visible Theatre as Hearthfire, a retreat home for creatives to remember their sacred role as change-makers. During a decade of eco-spirituality training, leading artist labs, and women's circles, Kala continued to stretch outside convention by designing and co-generating a distinctive multidisciplinary form of communal ritual art: Wonderstory.
Kala has her BFA in Acting from Boston University and an MFA in Acting from The New School for Social Research. She is also a member of AEA, SAG-AFTRA, a lifetime member of the Actors Studio, and a Certified Griefworker and Embodied Breathwork facilitator supporting people through creative blocks and life transitions.
Kala Smith
she/her/hers
Kala is a mother, communal ritual theatre designer, actor, and teacher. Initiated by complex grief as a teenager, she found refuge in theatre, somatics, and nature, which began her lifelong inquiry into theatre-making for collective transformation.
As an actor, Kala’s empathic portrayal of edge-dwellers led her to develop, and perform in new socio-political plays with NYC theatre visionaries, including Joe Chaikin, Adrienne Kennedy, and Arthur Penn, who directed her in a two-year process that invites the audience into a more relational experience.
Enlivened by this non-linear, ensemble approach, Kala founded Visible Theatre in 2000 to work outside commercial constraints and center untold stories. She learned alongside artists with and without disabilities in weekly labs and developed new plays and four True Story Projects, which debunked marginalizing tropes. Visible received NYSCA, DCA, and NEA grants and created intersectional happenings in shelters, colleges, NY City Hall, storefronts, and sometimes, theaters. Devising theatre for social change led Kala to a theatre faculty position at Johns Hopkins University in support of their Department of Arts & Sciences mission to humanize future leaders.
By 2010, Kala was a mama to three and re-launched Visible Theatre as Hearthfire, a retreat home for creatives to remember their sacred role as change-makers. During a decade of eco-spirituality training, leading artist labs, and women's circles, Kala continued to stretch outside convention by designing and co-generating a distinctive multidisciplinary form of communal ritual art: Wonderstory.
Kala has her BFA in Acting from Boston University and an MFA in Acting from The New School for Social Research. She is also a member of AEA, SAG-AFTRA, a lifetime member of the Actors Studio, and a Certified Griefworker and Embodied Breathwork facilitator supporting people through creative blocks and life transitions.
"Fashioned from clay, we carry the memory of the earth. Ancient, forgotten things stir within our hearts, memories from the time before the mind was born. Within us are the depths that keep watch.”
~John O' Donohue
