There is a quietness to the way Kana speaks. Measured, thoughtful, almost as if each sentence is being carefully placed into the space between us. “I’m a really quiet person,” she admits. Yet the work she creates demands presence, and the theater she imagines is anything but quiet. “I like loudness,” she tells me: “explosive theater — pyrotechnical theater.” It is precisely from the tension between this love for loudness and personal quietness that her understanding of theater emerges: something deeply lived, loud, and unruly.
Kana’s love for theater begins with a sense of absence. “When I lost things,” she reflects, “I feel like theater was always there. It was there in times of … lack. Loss.” Theater to her is something more than performance; it is a container for what cannot otherwise be held. This understanding carries into the kinds of stories she is drawn to, which return to “humans’ lived life” again and again. More particularly, “I love stories about families,” she tells me, explaining that they are “recognizable” yet “limitless.” Kana, with a brightness in her eyes, noted, “It takes courage to form a family, to communicate within a family … That’s why anything could happen in a family story.”
For Kana, the “limitless” of meaningful storytelling is embedded in the exploration of vulnerability that exists in family and in life. Such an invitation to vulnerability is most visible in Kana’s rehearsal room itself. When people enter her rehearsal space, taking off shoes is essential. “It leaves life and dirt outside the doors,” she added. Kana wants to create conditions that invite actors to step into a different mode of being that allows possibility, vulnerability, and anything in between. “When the soles of your feet touch the floor … you’re crossing a threshold and entering into the theater of all possibilities,” she explains.
That same emphasis on possibilities carries into Kana’s directing philosophy, where she resists the idea that a director’s role is to impose control. Instead, she remarked, “Directing is like teaching”: it is grounded in sharing rather than authority, and it allows mutual transformation. “Every time I had the opportunity to act, I was learning so much … and I needed somewhere for that to go,” she explains. For Kana, directing becomes a way of redistributing knowledge. “I normally have to model the kind of storytelling that I want to see,” she added, but this process requires more than instruction. It is about listening, observing, and practicing alongside the actors.
Although the director is often the driving force behind most productions, Kana is deeply aware that the role ultimately dissolves. One of the most formative ideas she encountered in her directing studies is deceptively simple: “The director never bows.” They are not meant to be seen. After tech, the work no longer belongs to her. The production continues independently while she slips away into the darkness. What remains is not ownership, but a presence that lingers without needing to be seen. Kana describes this shift in terms that feel almost ethical: “Humility. Surrender. Generosity.” In rejecting the image of the director as a singular authority, she reframes the role as one rooted in care and attentiveness.
She will soon slip into darkness again, as “Circle Mirror Transformation,” her upcoming directing thesis, takes shape. “Circle Mirror Transformation,” written by Annie Baker, is a play centered on an acting class happening in an acting studio. While the premise may seem straightforward, Kana is drawn to it for deeply personal reasons. “I think doing this play is a way for me to say thank you … to my teachers. And my classmates.” The production is an act of gratitude, shaped by the people and spaces that have defined her artistic development. At the same time, it reflects her growing awareness of time and perspective. “I’m at a place where I want to imagine a life beyond my age,” she says, describing her interest in thinking about lives beyond her immediate experience.
Within this context, Kana returns to a phrase that encapsulates her understanding of theater: “Theater is a rehearsal for real life.” In rehearsal for “Circle Mirror Transformation,” characters engage in exercises that seem simple — making eye contact, breathing, and speaking honestly — but gradually become transformative. “Acting class makes us more courageous and vulnerable,” she explains. The rehearsal room, then, is not separate from reality; it is a site for practicing it.
Additionally, in a play marked by pauses and stillness, Kana sees silence not as emptiness, but as possibility. “People are afraid of silence,” she reflects. “It feels like a waste of time.” Yet, she insists, “There’s so much that happens … that’s unheard and unseen.” Here, silence becomes a space that allows everything else to exist, much like what draws Kana to theater. “Loudness can only exist when there has been silence,” she explains. To live and to create fully, she suggests, is to be comfortable moving between these extremes.
This acceptance of opposites ultimately leads to Kana’s understanding of theater as an ephemeral art form. Unlike other media, theater cannot be preserved in the same way. “Once it’s done, it’s done,” she says. But rather than resisting this impermanence, she embraces it. “You have to be okay with letting go.” Letting go of control, of authorship, and even of the work itself becomes part of the practice. What remains is not a finished product, but a way of engaging with a world defined by openness, attentiveness, and renewal. “Connect with everything,” Kana tells me, “but don’t be attached to anything.”
In Kana’s theater, loudness and silence coexist, control gives way to surrender, and endings are simply openings in disguise.
Don’t miss “Circle Mirror Transformation,” opening April 24 at 8:00 p.m., with additional performances on April 25 at 2:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. and April 26 at 2:00 p.m.
