Amy Kim Waschke

About this Episode

We recorded this episode when the west coast fires were raging all up and down California, Oregon, and Washington state in Sep 2020. We talked about Amy's journey to becoming a stage actor as well as what her world looks like today as a company member for Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) during COVID-19.

One thing we talked about during this episode is how much the arts bring into the U.S. economy every year — on average, $877B is added to the economy, it employs 5.1M people, and is 4.5% of the GDP.

Stay tuned until the end of the episode for a funny bit of tape about the "Scottish play".

Episode Links

• Robyn Hunt
• The Suzuki Method for acting
• The Vampire Cowboys, a theatre company in New York, New York
• Robert Ross Parker
• "Vietgone" by Qui Nguyen — an NPR story from 2016 when Nguyen's play ran at Manhattan Theater Club
• "Poor Yella Rednecks" by Qui Nguyen — a story from the LA Times when Nguyen's play ran at South Coast Rep
• Mary Zimmerman's "The White Snake"
• Oregon Shakespeare Festival
• OSF support of the Almeda fire rebuilding effort
• From Artnet 2018, an article about the number of dollars and jobs in the arts
• Ira Glass' secret of success in creative work — from Maria Popova's Brain Pickings in 2014 — "Nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish somebody had told this to me — is that all of us who do creative work … we get into it because we have good taste. But it’s like there’s a gap, that for the first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good, OK? It’s not that great. It’s really not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not quite that good. But your taste — the thing that got you into the game — your taste is still killer, and your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you..."
• Amy Kim Waschke's website
• Intro and outro song: "Zombie Nation" by Jose Travieso