The one woman show about a life turned upside down

Hi, Kalena! Your play, Personal Inventory, unpacks and presents, to a very live audience, a whole lot of intimate familial trauma. What brought you here? Why are you exposing all of these family secrets on stage?

Personal Inventory is very much told from my perspective, and while I’m sharing parts of my family’s story, it’s filtered through my experience and my attempt to understand the layers of untruths that shaped my life. There are deeper secrets, ones that could take the show in a much darker direction if I chose to explore them, but that’s not what this project is about.

Instead, it’s about piecing together the life I’ve lived – focusing on the confusion and the unraveling of what I was told versus what I’ve discovered to be true. I’m not digging into every hidden thing; it’s more about confronting the unspoken tensions that exist when you grow up surrounded by silence and lies. So, while there’s an element of exposing family secrets, it’s really more about exposing the way I’ve come to understand my own story.

The play takes place at a film studio for a live talk show. In it, you play both yourself and an Oprah-like character. Tell us about your relationship to Oprah…

Oprah has been with me for as long as I can remember, even though I grew up without TV. My mom’s family – my white family – always told me I was like Oprah. I think it was partly because I asked so many questions, but also because I was always lifting up the rug, trying to see what was hiding underneath. My curiosity made people uncomfortable, and I had this way of seeing through things people didn’t want to talk about. I’m sure there was some race stuff in there for them, too. Growing up, my mom had a dark room for her photography practice behind our laundry room, and as a kid, I would spend hours in there pretending to interview people.

When we opened New Theater Hollywood, we started with ​“a night of speeches” in which we asked all the upcoming directors and artists to give a speech at a messy, deconstructed gala. In some trashy way, we see community theater as a place to embarrass yourself – to put your whole truth on display for friends and those around you. Who in your mind, is the ideal audience for this play?

I have to admit, you guys are a little messy boots and love the chaos, which is always interesting to watch. I tend to want to wrap up the loose ends of chaos, while you seem to thrive in it. But if I had to pick my ideal audience, it would be everyone who attended my wedding. They were there for this big moment, so it would give the play so much context. Since the wedding, I’ve had at least 10 major fallouts with people, and a lot of that stems from my own self-discovery and things that I was refusing to confront before. The person who’s changed the most is me, and I don’t hold grudges about letting people go. I’ve come to realize that obligation makes people act in strange ways, and I want all my relationships, familial or otherwise, to be ones of choice, not necessity.

The term ​“family secrets” gets thrown around a lot in the world, but you really drop some life altering information in this play, all of which you learned through taking a 23andMe test. The reveal of these secrets caused a lot of anger in your family. Will any of your family be in the audience for the play?

Yes! My first cousin, who plays a big part in the film portion of the play, will be there. He’s a major interview in the project, so I’m really curious to see how he’ll respond to watching himself on screen, and how the audience will react to him, especially if they recognise him. It’ll be interesting to see how that dynamic plays out in real time.

How does it feel to play yourself?

We always talk about how life is theatre, and I think I play a lot of different characters in my life. So, in a way, this doesn’t feel that different. But the main difference here is that I’m trying really hard not to have all the guards up that I normally have, and I’m not making myself the butt of the joke this time. There’s a level of sincerity in this project that I don’t usually let many people see, and that vulnerability makes things a bit more uncomfortable for me. It’s a new space to be in, but I think that’s part of the point.

You’re a producer, and you normally organise huge photoshoots, brand launches, that kind of thing. Personal Inventory is an event from the second you arrive. There is a step and repeat outside, all the audience members get a Polaroid shot of them at the door. You are so detail-oriented, but the thing about theatre is you can’t control everything. The energy is left, in part, to the audience and what they bring. Does that tension excite you?

I mean, you can never really control anything, which is exactly why I’m so detail-oriented. To me, a good producer turns over every barrel to check if there’s any shit in it so you can clean it up, knowing there’s always more in the next one. But I believe in the art of the pivot. The pivot might be the closest thing to a religion I have. Pivoting requires prep, and to me, prep is life. So that tension between preparation and the unpredictability of live theater is exciting because it’s where all the pivots happen.

Personal Inventory opens on 15^th October and will run until 18^th. Grab yourself a ticket here. For all things New Theater Hollywood, it’s this way.