.png){kind=spacer}
I’ve wanted to share this story for quite some time now—why I decided to retire from acting. You may have realized that on this podcast, I invite other actors, creatives, and crew to share their experiences in the theater world vulnerably. Well, it only seems fair for me to dig deep and share my story with you, too.
In this episode, I’m sharing my experiences as a commercial and theater actor, as both a mom and an actress, and what ultimately led me to retire from the stage. I’ll never name names (unless it’s something or someone I’m raving about), but I think it’s important to speak my truth and share my story with you. Join me for this raw solo conversation, and please let me know if there’s anything from my story you relate to. I’d love to hear from you!
In this episode, we cover:
How I decided to quit acting
What life looked like when I was balancing acting and EDI consulting
What my last modeling experience was like, and why was it my last
Some of my final acting experiences and what problems arose
What plans do I have for my future—and if they include getting back on stage
Have you decided or thought about taking a break from the theater world for any reason at all? I'd love to hear about it! You can reach out to me on Instagram.
Links & Mentioned Resources
Connect with Kira:
Thanks for joining me on this episode of Inclusive Stages! If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review on Apple or Spotify to help me reach even more theater makers, theater artists, and theater lovers who want to make our industry a better place for everyone.
Thanks to our music composer, Zachary McConnell, and our producer, Leah Bryant.
More about the Inclusive Stages Podcast
Welcome to 'Inclusive Stages' -- the go-to weekly podcast for theater makers, theater artists, and theater lovers who want to make our industry a better place for everyone. We'll chat with actors, directors, designers, scholars, and more about the current landscape of the theater scene and get their thoughts on how we can do better.
Host Kira Troilo will also give you a sneak peek into live EDI coaching sessions and offer actionable tips for creating more equitable, inclusive, and empathetic theater spaces that support and value the diversity of artists and audiences. Join the conversation, and let's collectively shape the future of human-first theater, one stage at a time.
This post may contain affiliate links, so I may earn a small commission when you make a purchase through links on my site at no additional cost to you.
The unedited podcast transcript for this episode of the Inclusive Stages podcast follows
Kira Troilo (00:05.666)
Hello, theater friends. Thank you so much for being here for another episode of Inclusive Stages. I'm so excited you're here, always, so always grateful to have you. Today, I wanted to talk about something I've wanted to talk about for a while. And on this podcast, you know, I ask other actors, other artists to come and be vulnerable and share their stories.
and really dig deep with me. So I know that's not fair to do without doing it myself. So today I wanted to talk about my experiences as an actor and specifically why I decided that I couldn't do it anymore. At least for now, I think I'll be back, but that might be a long way off. But there was one full year after I started my business. So after I created Art & Soul Consulting,
my consulting firm, I essentially tried to make both that and acting work at the same time. And spoiler alert, it did not go very well. You know, it went well in the sense that I was able to grow my business and try it out, you know, and things were going really well. I also was able to perform in some really great shows and, you know, I had some successful theater experiences as an actor.
However, I found that being an actor and also trying to advocate for change in the industry did not go hand in hand as I could have suspected. But I thought it was really important to share why I decided I couldn't be an actor anymore and do this work at the same time. And this is, you know, specifically, we're talking a lot about theater here, but I also wanted to just touch briefly on the commercial world.
I worked with an agent for a while and was doing modeling and commercial gigs Because you know most actors can't just make a living on theater acting unfortunately we have to supplement so You know I was doing these gigs where I'd go out for you know Maybe I don't know a day or two and work on a commercial or work on a photo shoot So I I'm gonna start there
Kira Troilo (02:25.742)
my very last commercial job before I decided to quit that agency. The agency was great, I loved them, but I just realized, you know, this work wasn't going to be for me while I was trying to make a change in the industry. So I'm going to share about this last experience, keeping in mind, I will never share names.
you know, of shoots or brands or shows or any of that. Especially if I have criticism. If I want to rave about someone, of course I will. But in this case, just know that I won't name the experience but it's also not.
Kira Troilo (03:13.514)
It's also not an experience that is uncommon. Some of the things I'm about to talk about have happened a lot to me in my work and I'm sure other actors will be nodding vigorously. So this specific one though, I was hired as an actor slash model for an ankle brace. So for the audition, I had to basically go on Zoom and do a little bit of a yoga flow on my mat here.
for two women. Fine. I love yoga. I, you know, I'm a dedicated yogi. So I was able to do that. I found out I booked the job. Great. When you go to the set, you know, the first place you'll usually go is hair and makeup and wardrobe. So I went to wardrobe. Fine. They got me in this, you know, cute little sports bra type crop thing.
and some tight capri leggings, like really, you know, skin tight yoga pants. Okay, so while I'm getting my wardrobe together, I see another actor who is getting their hair done. A hair person is styling their hair in this ponytail with some wispies. It looks great. So I go over to her and I see, you know, this very familiar kind of wide-eyed look of fear at my hair.
If you're just listening and not watching, you know, I have very curly textured hair that usually when they have people on set at these things, they don't usually have people who know how to do my hair. So I'm very used to that. But the woman looks at me and says, oh, I think your hair looks great the way it is. Which is funny because you know, it's like seven in the morning. I've rolled out of bed and thrown my hair up into a messy bun with frizz everywhere. Looks fine how it is.
I'm like, oh, okay, so, you know, I've resigned myself, of course, to just doing my own hair. I fixed the bun so it looked nice with some wispies. Fine, again, very normal, unfortunately. Okay, now I go, I'm in my yoga outfit. I've got my hair done. I go to set, right? Okay, I walk into this room. Now, the room is full of about 25 people, okay? I'm gonna try to set the scene for you.
Kira Troilo (05:39.47)
25 of those people are white and about 23 of them are men. So, you know, I have no idea what I'm doing. I walk in, a director comes up to me and introduces himself. He tells me where to go. He points up to one side of the room and I see this stage, like a literal stage raised up where there's a green screen behind it and.
that's set up like a house. So they have a yoga mat spread out as though I'm gonna play this woman doing yoga in her house. Okay. I go on the stage. I don't know any of these people. No one has made time to introduce themselves. I am literally the only woman of color in the room, only person of color in the room. And I'm about to perform yoga for them all in a crop top sports bra, right? On a stage.
fine. So the director puts me on the mat and I say, is there someone I should meet who's going to help direct me through the poses? He says, oh just do the things that you did in your audition that should be fine. Okay. So I realized not only do they have no one who can do my hair, they don't have anyone who can walk me through the yoga poses. The director doesn't know the names of the poses. There's no there's no one there. There's no one there for me.
So I say, okay, so, you know, I'm a yogi, hey, I start doing some sun A, you know, sun salutations. Great, I go through, I, you know, I raise my arms up, I bend over. I hear the director say things like, oh great, can you just hold that thing where you're bent over? Oh, oh yeah, with your leg in the air. Yeah, that's great, that's great. So I am self-directing myself through yoga, half-clothed.
in front of a room of all of these people I don't know being told, yeah, can you hold that one where you're bent over? And I truly, it was at that moment, I had this vision and it felt like a horror movie, to be honest. It felt kind of like get out, where I imagined, you know, this ad, this, you know, commercial we're filming, right? Someday...
Kira Troilo (08:00.53)
someone is gonna see this, people are gonna see this. And the funny thing too, if you're not aware, as models and actors, we never know where these things are going. We don't know if it's going to TV, to computer, to a print, like we don't know. We just like maybe happen across it at some point if we're Googling ourselves and our work. Anyway, I had this vision of...
someone watching me do yoga on TV. So they're watching, imagine you're this person, right? Watching this ad, you see this black, biracial woman doing yoga serenely in her house. And if you think at all about the company behind it, you're probably thinking, okay, great. They've got some diversity, right? I know that's what I used to think when I would watch commercials and say, oh, okay, I'm seeing more.
diversity, more racial diversity in these. Meanwhile, it's like this is the horror movie aspect where you flip and you see what I see. Standing on the stage with a green screen behind me, my hair is fine, no one has given me direction. I'm in a crop top sports bra and I'm looking out at a sea of 23 white men and two white women.
None of whom I know who have introduced themselves to me, none of whom are there offering any kind of support for me, and none of whom look like me at all. Basically a group of people behind scenes who are getting this praise or this thinking that they've done great work, great work in diversity.
And it just made me really sick, honestly. I, this feeling had hit me before, but I think in this phase of me really deciding to devote my career to inclusion in the arts, it hit me that I can't do this anymore. I can't be this person standing in being this token without any support and knowing that it's wrong. Now I also,
Kira Troilo (10:16.154)
After me, they had some other actors coming in. They had a young black actor who was gonna be doing some basketball and wearing a wrist brace. They had this Southeast Asian woman who was gonna be practicing tennis with a knee brace. So these are the people you were gonna see in the ad, right? And that's what we're projecting to the world. I couldn't shake that. It just, I knew that was gonna be the last time I did that.
So that's the commercial world. And again, I will name too that I'm so lucky and I'm privileged to be able to say, no, I can't do that anymore. A lot of actors and models, we have no choice. We just take the job because we need the job. So I wanna make clear, I'm not shaming anyone who needs to keep doing this. I just realized if I wanna change this, then I need to do this work from the outside.
Kira Troilo (11:24.446)
Okay, so let's talk about the theater world. Different issues, but lots of rough stuff, as I know everyone involved as a theater artist or a theater maker knows. I also won't name any companies or any shows, but I don't really have to, because a lot of the experiences that I'll share in my, you know, my last, quote unquote, as an actor in this point in my life are very common.
It's not just one theater or one place. It is, this is everywhere. So I, enough of, yeah, preamble, I will just share. So I did a few shows in my time after I started my company.
Kira Troilo (12:31.406)
So I did a few shows in the time after I started my company, but I went into these shows like totally different than I had in the past. I learned some things about boundaries. I'd also gotten out of that mindset that many, many actors and creatives and artists are in, which is that they need to not cause any problems or be difficult in any way. So, you know, I've tried to get out of that. So.
When I got offered this great role in a show, I actually responded with some questions before I just like hurried and accepted the role, you know, without thinking. So here were my two questions for this particular one. First, the rehearsal process was six days a week, okay? That means four weekday nights and all day, Saturday, all day, Sunday. So essentially, as a mom of a little guy, you know, my son at the time was either four or five.
That would mean missing six bedtimes to do this job. Many moms out there, parents, you know, they're like six bedtimes is a lot of bedtimes to miss. So I took a deep breath and asked, can I go home early one of those nights so that I have two bedtimes per week? That's it, like just two.
And secondly, one of my best friends was actually getting married during the rehearsal process. And this is something else we deal with a lot. Weddings and funerals, you know, we miss them. We miss these important dates in our lives because we don't want to be difficult and we want to just get the show. And we don't want to get passed over for someone else. So anyway, I took another deep breath and I wrote, you know, I have my best friends.
Wedding, I am going to serve as the maid of honor, so I would need one day off. Okay. Keep in mind as well that this production utilize understudies. So I had an incredible understudy. You know, at the time we were still negotiating contracts and stuff, but the plan was to have an understudy and I knew any understudy would be thrilled to fill in for me for one day, right? Just one day. Okay, you would think I asked for the moon, friends.
Kira Troilo (14:49.026)
The moon. I was on hold with the company for over a week. They would not approve my request to have one night get out early so that I could do two bedtimes a week. They really couldn't work out a world where I couldn't.
they really couldn't work out a world where I could miss one hour of one Sunday just to put my son to bed. That was a deal breaker. I did end up getting the wedding day off, but it was a very difficult process. Again, it took over a week. I was told it was very difficult. They weren't sure if they were going to be able to give me that. Now, I plan to do an episode also on like some things that
we as theater people and entertainment people are not going to do anymore. And one of them is miss huge life events like weddings, like funerals. We're not doing it anymore, right? So I, at that point, decided to do the show. No, wait, let's take that out, actually, Leah, because I don't want people to know what show it is. So I'll take out the part about doing the show.
Kira Troilo (16:12.338)
Okay, so that was one situation. Another story, again, not uncommon, but I did a show with a lot of moms. And that doesn't ever happen. We never get to do shows with moms because parents really can't usually swing doing theater. Like the hours are so hard, childcare is expensive.
You know, oftentimes childcare is gonna be more expensive than a weekly paycheck as an actor. So anyway, this one process I tried to get, I think we had like six little kids between all of us and I thought, oh, let's invite them all to rehearsal one day for 20 minutes. It'll be great to gather them all together. You would think again that I threatened to destroy the theater because that was just out of the question.
there were definitely other things that happened throughout the course of trying to be someone who was advocating for EDI in theater and also being an actor on the ground, seeing that there was just not, not much care happening beyond the organizational level, right? And as actors, the hard thing is we go through these tough things and my, you know, my stories are
compared to some of the other stories that I've heard and that you'll continue to hear on this podcast. But the thing about acting is actors have to act. Like you don't get to choose, oh, I think I'll work here because of their values. You can choose that, but you're also gonna drastically limit your chances of being cast or working. So.
You know, as actors, we can't do much of anything about injustices because we need to stay hireable and we can't be too difficult or we'll get a reputation and we won't be able to work. So I realized as some of these things were happening in my career that I couldn't make change from the inside. I really had to get on the outside so that I could stand up and speak out about some of these, you know, rehearsal and performance culture nightmares.
Kira Troilo (18:29.254)
I couldn't do it from within the system. So I had to not be afraid. And I had to, you know, let me go back.
Kira Troilo (18:39.71)
I had to not be afraid and I also had to make the leap to not have theaters use me to tell any kind of story about their morals or values as an actor. I had to say, you know what, I'm gonna step outside of that and I am going to put all of my eggs into the EDI and inclusion basket in the arts and actually really try to get in and do this work because I don't want...
this to continue. Hold on one second.
Kira Troilo (19:23.062)
because I don't want to be in rooms where...
Kira Troilo (19:31.342)
companies or directors or producers are trying to tell a story about diversity by me being there. But there's no investment in the care. Care, that is the key word in those environments to make sure that we are recognizing people's humanity. That's why I do what I do.
And that's why I don't miss acting yet, because I really want to set up these systems of care and compassion and environments and taking everyone's identity into account and doing work from the inside and not just on the outside. So that's why I retired. I don't know. What do you think? I hope I can go back one day. I know I'll want to.
but I'm really hoping that we see some really big change before that happens. So let me know what you think. Have you decided or thought about taking a break from the theater world for any reason at all? I'd love to hear about it. You can definitely reach out to me on inclusivestages.com, over on Instagram.
I'd love to hear from you and any stories that you have that you'd like to share. That's it for now though. I hope you have an amazing rest of your day wherever you are and keep taking care of yourselves. See you next time.