When wildfires swept through Ava King’s neighborhood in Altadena, California, this past January, the theater and women’s & gender studies double major found inspiration in the stories of her neighbors.
Ava King performing in Lobby Hero.
Ava King with Aviva Neff
King’s home was luckily spared from the wildfires, but the landscape of Altadena was changed forever.
Moved by the resiliency of her community, she interviewed different people she knew who were affected by the fires. Those interviews grew into a play consisting of 15 monologues.
King performed two of the monologues for her audition for Denison’s Osborne scholarship, which she was recently awarded.
The scholarship, available to all Denison Fine Arts majors, provides money toward tuition and a stipend for arts-related activities. King is hoping to use some of the stipend to organize a reading of her play in Altadena on the one year anniversary of the fire.
In true liberal arts fashion, King created her own theater emphasis at Denison — critical comedy studies — to combine her majors.
“I’m interested in studying the connection between comedy and social justice, which integrates my women’s and gender studies major in there,” she says.
Her current study abroad experience is helping to expand upon what she has learned at Denison. Now studying in Bath, England, she is taking classes focused on her theater emphasis. One class, “Satire, Irony, and Nonsense,” focuses on what makes the English laugh, adding another perspective to her Denison education.
The program also allows her to travel to see live performances of the plays she studies in class.
“I’ll get to go see productions in London, Bath, and other surrounding areas,” she says. “It’s really cool to get to see really high-quality live theater.”
She wants theater to remain a part of her life after graduation and plans to use her degrees to work in nonprofit or the arts.
