Artist Profile: Kim A. Onah ’15 on Broadway, Creating Art, and the Joy of Performing

What do Harvard and Broadway have in common? According to Kim A. Onah ’15, imposter syndrome.

“You just feel like you’re never good enough,” Onah said while laughing in an interview with The Harvard Crimson.

To be fair, one would hardly call Onah an imposter — she made her Broadway debut in the joyous “& Juliet” last year, and she has just opened “The Notebook: The Musical” at Broadway’s Schoenfeld Theatre. Beyond Broadway, Onah boasts a string of acting credits that include “Guys and Dolls,” “All Shook Up,” and “Dreaming Zenzile.”

As a native of Staten Island, Onah’s love for theater first began when her parents brought her to the original Broadway production of “Aida,” which starred Heather Headley as the titular character.

“I was just so captivated by Heather and her talent, and the fact that it was a story about a Black woman, and she was the title character,” Onah said.

Headley went on to win a Tony Award for her performance in “Aida,” and Onah immersed herself in the world of theater. As an undergraduate at Harvard, she was part of the a capella group the Harvard Callbacks and was deeply involved in the theater scene, performing in numerous campus productions throughout her four years on campus. But her favorite show remains her first foray into theater at Harvard, a production of “Spring Awakening.” in which she played Martha. The show was staged at OBERON, the former second stage of the American Repertory Theater, which Onah described as “an experimental space” that lent itself to theatrical innovation.

“It just felt like we were doing something really different and cool and edgy,” Onah said.

This desire to take risks and try new things serves as an apt prelude to Onah’s decision to pursue acting professionally after college, despite her parents’ reservations — something that she cheekily acknowledges on her website’s introduction, which reads: “Despite her parents’ best efforts to persuade her, Kim still isn’t getting a Computer Science degree or pursuing a consistently lucrative career.” In fact, Onah did work at a start-up right out of college at her parents’ behest, even as she did regional theater in the greater Boston area.

“I think I was doing that because I wanted to make my parents happy, and after a year of doing that, I realized it was not what I wanted to do,” Onah said. “So I moved to New York and just dug in deep.”

Onah’s leap of faith paid off. Even so, she is careful not to romanticize her journey from Harvard theater to Broadway, instead observing that the transitions were challenging at times, and understandably so — it’s hard to go from performing as a hobby to performing as a way to make a living.

“You feel the pressures of the industry, and you feel the pressure of the job,” Onah said.

Despite this uncertainty, she described the shift as an “exciting” one, for it was something that Onah, like most other actresses, could only dream of doing. When asked to recount her Broadway debut as Juliet in “& Juliet” last year, Onah said bluntly, “It was scary! And I kind of blacked out.”

Nevertheless, Onah’s Broadway debut was a smashing success, and her joy as a performer radiates from the stage. She chalks this up to the extensive preparation she takes when rehearsing for a role, including making lists to understand her character’s motivations and booking voice lessons on her own.

But for Onah, happiness is not defined solely by theater. Rather, it’s about finding the joy in whatever one chooses to pursue.

“It’s so important to have something that you’re doing outside of work that is not tied to you and is not tied to a financial or professional output,” Onah said.

This rings true especially for those working in creative fields, where it is all too easy to burn out even as one pursues a dream.

“Because we do theater, we think that, ‘Oh, we’re creating art. This is going to be so fulfilling every single day,’” Onah said. “And that’s just not true.”

The perspective that Onah brings in her pursuit of theater is refreshingly honest, and as she continues to chase her dreams with maturity and grace, one thing is for certain — Kim Onah is the real deal.

—Staff writer Angelina X. Ng can be reached at angelina.ng@thecrimson.com.