Kaitlin

Hi, my name's Kaitlin Evans. I am 26 years old. I am genderqueer, so I use they/them pronouns, and I also identify as queer in the sexuality spectrum.

I started my performing arts journey when I was very little in a performing arts choir, the Australian Girls Choir. So I grew up doing lots of singing and sort of dancing, not intense dancing, “choralography,” as we call it.

And then when I got to probably around middle school, I realised I wanted to start looking into musical theatre as a career. And then as I started pursuing that, I also discovered my love for just natural “straight” acting as well, for plays and things like that.

After graduation from school, I ended up going to the Australian Dance Performance Institute for my advanced diploma in musical theatre, and then I went to the Conservatorium for a Bachelor of Acting in the second year of the course in existence, which is very exciting!

In terms of my journey as a queer artist, for a long time, I identified as a woman, and I identified as a queer woman, and I was very proud in my female essence and everything like that. And I centred a lot of my identity as a human around being a queer female. And then during COVID lockdown, I discovered that I'm not as much of a woman as I originally thought. So I went through the process of trying to discover what that meant for me, changing of pronouns, exploring names and different things like that. Now I've landed in they/them, but I think my journey as a genderqueer person is still unraveling and as a trans human is still unraveling as I get older which is very fun.

I think something interesting in this industry that I don't quite have the answer for yet is where trans people live in this bubble that is the musical theatre and performing arts and acting world. Because in Australia, I feel like we're quite a while behind where America used to be and where England kind of is sitting as well. And so the bubble for trans artists is quite small here in the ‘professional’ sector. So I've personally taken a bit of a step back from that in recent years and stepped towards the more independent theatre sector and the community theatre sector, where I feel like there is such a bubbling, beautiful community of trans and queer and gender non-conforming and just this beautiful melting pot of LGBT performers just coalescing all in those sectors. And I found a lovely little home there, which has been nice.

I, as an artist I also work as a music director and a stage manager and things like that. And so in those different areas of my career, I want to be able to be someone who helps create space for queer performers, particularly trans performers, I think is really important in Australia that we see the society that is around us on stage. And I think currently that's something that's lacking. So yeah, part of my journey as a creative is helping foster that.