I’d like to start this article by thanking everybody who’s been following along—and to apologize for taking a month-long hiatus from this project. A lot happened last month, most notably an insurrection against American democracy…and in the wake of that, it felt crude and tone-deaf to ask people to read my blog, so I took a little bit of time away, but I’m pleased to say that I’m back at it.
Now, it’s not new information that the COVID-19 pandemic has taken its toll on the American theatre industry. Venues are shuttered, workers are almost entirely unemployed, and there’s no end in sight, despite optimistic vaccination projections and hopes for a speedy economic recovery.
Having spoken with many theatre professionals who are out of work in the field, I’ve been both saddened and inspired by the stories of my fellow arts workers. Their pain is all too familiar to me, yet their ability to find hope amidst our bleak circumstances helps motivate me to keep moving forward. It feels cliché to say, but it’s important to remember that we are not alone—and there will come a time when we get back to work.
With that in mind, I reached out to Kolby Kindle.
It’s the day of the show, y’all! Opening night is a matter of hours away, and after a hiatus that lasted much longer than anyone anticipated, Kolby Kindle is about to do something incredible: his job.
Originally from Edmond, Oklahoma, the musical theatre performer is now based out of New York. Currently, however, as the five boroughs dig themselves out of a recent blizzard, Kolby is experiencing summer in Melbourne, Australia—where he’s performing in Come from Away, the hit Broadway musical based on the true story of a Canadian small town banding together to provide support for displaced strangers in the aftermath of 9/11.
As we talk, Kolby sits in his company-provided artist housing in Melbourne, sipping his morning coffee while I opt for a post-dinner glass of red wine (gotta love a time difference). I’m excited to hear about life in Australia…but first, I ask him about his start.
“It’s something that I’ve been doing since I was a kid,” he says of theatre. “Growing up in Edmond was interesting—Edmond’s an amazing city, but I didn’t have a lot of people who looked like me doing theatre, so I was kind of a quiet kid—not an outcast, but I definitely had to find my own way there.”
Kolby found his way to Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio.
“When I got into Otterbein,” he says, “that was just a no-brainer, because they gave me a great scholarship and I wanted a smaller liberal arts college. And at Otterbein, you have to do an internship, so I spent ten weeks in New York City, and then went back and finished up my degree.
“When I graduated, I spent the summer doing Music Theatre Wichita, so I was there for the entire summer and then I moved to New York. Moving back, I had my footing because I’d spent 10 weeks there, which was great.”
With his post-college transition eased and his first professional gigs out of the way, it didn’t take long for Kolby to find gainful employment. He was in the city for about a year when he was asked to join the national tour of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.
“I auditioned for that right out of college and then I didn’t hear anything. You know how it goes: you’re on file; you go back in; you go back in. So I was auditioning a lot, waiting on that to happen—and then once that happened, I was on tour for a year, and then the next tour happened.”
Kolby went from Beauty and the Beast to Dreamgirls to Sister Act to The Book of Mormon, but he’s humble about his trajectory.
“It feels like it all happened fast, but of course there are times of unemployment and times of working four jobs in New York City, which I know very well. But yes, I have toured a lot, and I feel like I’m good at making any place my home.”
He had started to make Australia his home, having been performing with Come From Away for months, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced the production to close temporarily.
“Around December of 2019,” he tells me, “we started hearing about this virus in China. The show was supposed to go to China in April, through June of 2020, and we were like, ‘the show probably won’t be going there because they’re on lockdown, so we’ll just pick back up in Sydney.’
“Right around March is when the show was supposed to close in Melbourne. But they were shutting the city down, so we closed a week earlier than planned. I was just like, ‘I’ll go back to the States, and then I’ll join the company in Sydney,’ which was supposed to be in July of 2020. So we were thinking the pandemic would last a couple of months, and then we’d be back at it. And that obviously didn’t happen.”
Out of a job, Kolby returned to Oklahoma to spend time with family.
“I was only expecting to be there for two weeks, because I had a vacation planned…but I ended up being in Oklahoma for three months. Then I went back to New York in June.”
Luckily, Kolby was able to get on unemployment, and he also worked part-time as a director/choreographer and acting coach for DMR Adventures, an online arts education program that provides performing arts training from industry professionals.
“I started working with them back in 2018,” he says. “It’s a great school, and the kids are so talented. It was all virtual even before the pandemic, and working with them has been a lifesaver—not just having some kind of employment. It was the artistic fulfillment I needed. I’m still working with them now; we’re doing Beauty and the Beast.”
After nine long months, Australia had beaten back the virus enough to allow for in-person performances, and Kolby was finally able to return to work. The country he returned to was very different from the one he’d left.
“I got into Sydney December 10th and I quarantined for two weeks in a hotel there. It’s very interesting, the process: as soon as you get off the airplane you’re escorted by the National Guard, or their version of the National Guard, to a bus. And then they escort you to the hotel and to your room—you’re not getting off the plane and going to get a bagel at Starbucks. You’re in the room for two weeks. They give you three meals a day—some of the meals are good, some of them are questionable,” he laughs.
“And they have a nurse; you get two COVID tests—one on day three, one on day ten. And every day, you have a nurse calling you to check to see if you’re having symptoms, and you also have another nurse that calls to check on your mental health. And because you can’t leave the room, there’s a guard outside of the room 24 hours a day. There’s no leaving and going down and getting a soda from the vending machine—none of that.
“Luckily, I had a big balcony area and the weather was nice, so I stayed out there and worked out out there. And a lot of TV, a lot of reading, and I was also working on the show—because I had nine months off, so there was a lot of reviewing.
“Once you’re cleared, you leave the hotel. I was flying to Melbourne, so they escorted me to the airport and then I flew here, arrived on December 24th—Christmas Eve.”
He started rehearsals a week later. I ask him what it was like to be back in the rehearsal room.
“It was amazing,” he says. “You know, we were all nervous because it’s a new world. Walking in wearing a mask, every time we enter and exit we have to get our temperature checked. And so, that was just a new normal, but seeing everyone…I’m really close with these people, with this cast. So it was great to be reunited with them.”
As this production of Come from Away is being produced in Australia, most cast members are Australian—Kolby is one of five Americans in the show. And while not much has changed since the company went on hiatus, one shift is noticeable and appreciated.
“We all play these different roles; the main character I play is Bob, but he also plays an African man, and he plays a pilot. And a change [the company’s] made, which I think is amazing: we now have a standby who’s Black and American, so we have an actual Black man playing an African man. Same for the other Black character in the show, Hannah—they’ve also hired a Black woman standby. It’s in the script: ‘I met these African people,’ [and before,] when we called out of the show, we didn’t have Black people playing those roles.”
Having been a professional actor for over a decade, Kolby’s seen some changes in the industry regarding equity, diversity, and inclusion. One of the most striking moments in recent theatre history occurred in the summer of 2020.
Amid protests for police accountability and racial equity following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers, the American theatre community experienced its own reckoning with its racist past and present. Countless theatre workers of color, pushing aside fears of personal and professional retaliation, came forward to describe their experiences with systemic racism in the industry.
Shortly thereafter, a coalition of heavy-hitting industry professionals released a document entitled “We See You, White American Theatre” (or WSYWAT for short), which detailed a list of demands: institutional changes that must be made for theatre to be equitable.
I ask Kolby what he believes to be the most pressing issue.
“I’ve always thought of theater as being the front runner when it comes to diversity,” he says. “We have so far to go, and I think we should be further along than we are, especially when it comes to diversity in leadership. Yes, we have great shows with different ethnicities and races on stage, but when it comes to producers, directors, casting directors, having diversity is only going to trickle down into what happens onstage. If we’re going to tell all these different stories, you’ve got to have them being directed, produced, cast by people who can relate to those stories; we need people with perspective in leadership roles. It just adds a sense of authenticity that you can’t buy. Like I said, it trickles down.”
While the influence of WSYWAT can be seen in the recent addition of Black cast members to the Australian production of Come From Away, there is still much to be done—especially in America, a nation that has yet to fully acknowledge not only the harm done to disenfranchised communities in the past, but also how that harm manifests itself in systemic inequality today.
I ask Kolby if there’s anything we can learn from Australia, a country with its own history of racism and oppression, when it comes to this particular conversation.
“Australia really acknowledges the harm they’ve done to the Aboriginal community,” he says. “Before a show, they announce: ‘we’re on stolen land and this belongs to this tribe.’ I think that that is beautiful, just that it’s being acknowledged. Just being like, ‘we’re about to perform a show, but let’s not forget where, and why we’re able to do this.’
“I think that’s the first step of progress, just acknowledging the mistakes that you’ve made. We cannot undo anything that’s been done, but when you acknowledge the damage that has been done, that’s how you move forward. That’s the first step.”
While America has a long way to go to begin to rectify our past wrongs, and as we try to get on top of a virus that’s ravaged the nation, there’s much to be learned from even recent history—and Come from Away serves as a reminder.
“It’s crazy how parallel this show is to what’s happening right now. Yes, 9/11 was not a pandemic, but it was something that happened very fast. You didn’t have much time to get your resources together, but people just jumped in and helped wherever they could. It’s about community. Community is so important. You’ve got to put your differences aside when it comes to helping people, because we all want to feel safe and loved and protected.”
I ask Kolby what Australia has been doing to keep people safe.
“It’s very different than how we’re handling things in the States,” he says. “I mean, they’ve had zero cases for the past three weeks, going on four. And even with that, there’s still contact tracing. When you enter a restaurant, every single person that walks in must QR in, put your information in, which is for tracking purposes. And then masks are still required when inside stores, for indoor dining until you’re sitting down, so they’re still taking it seriously even though they’ve had zero cases. Of course, some restrictions have been let up—obviously, we’re doing a show—but they’re very aware and very cautious.”
Would it be possible for America to be just as cautious and aware?
“There are a lot more people in the States than Australia,” Kolby says, somewhat skeptically. “I think the beauty of our country is that we are able to be independent thinkers and do what we want. I have the luxury of being able to think how I want, live how I want, pray how I want. But at the same time, I think we lack that sense of, ‘okay, I just need to help my neighbor and listen to the professionals.’ America, we have this ego about us.
“I wish I could just like fly back and sit down with the US government and be like, ‘okay, listen: this actually works, so do this,’ and I guess my hope is that we just put our egos aside. Because what’s going to get everything up and running is teamwork. Community. That’s really what’s going to help. This is proof—being here is proof—seeing how they all made a sacrifice for a long time.
“But they also had help, you know. They had help from their government, they had help from their unions to help them get through it. So I hope that everyone steps up to the plate. It’s going to have to happen for things to change.”
While American theatre workers wait for that change to take place, Kolby has some optimism to share.
“Don’t get discouraged. Up until I actually started rehearsals I’d been very discouraged about this business, but the way that I’ve seen the people in this city embrace this show and get so excited about it…my mind is blown.
“A lot of people come see the show because it’s been recommended, you know, and so a lot of people aren’t theater people. And we’ve had a lot of people from when we first opened here come back, and they’re like, ‘I usually don’t see theatre, but I love this show and now I’m finding myself looking for other shows that are opening up here.’
“I think people crave live theater. People crave concerts. People crave human interaction. And I think sometimes we look at theater as being this hobby—that we can take it or leave it. I don’t think that that’s the case. It’s a bigger part of life than we think it is, and being here has proven that people crave it. They really do.”
Audiences aren’t the only ones craving theatre; Kolby knows all too well that there are countless performers who long to return to work. As I leave him to prepare for re-opening night, I wish him luck (or broken legs, as it were). He thanks me and dedicates his performance:
“I’m doing it for everybody back home. We’re going to get through this—we are. I believe it.” ↓
Kolby Kindle is an actor, director, and coach based out of New York City.
If you’re in Australia and want to see him in Come from Away, check out tour cities and dates at the production’s official website.
And if you’re interested in his coaching, be sure to visit DMR Adventures.
Thanks for reading. See you next time.
*production photos by Dayna Ransley