Daily Inspiration: Meet Alie Karambash

Today we’d like to introduce you to Alie Karambash.

Hi Alie, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I have always gravitated towards the arts. Although I am the only career artist in my family, I grew up surrounded by music, storytelling, and an appreciation for the arts. I have had a love for music, in particular, since a very young age. I picked up the clarinet and played until my first few years in college before realizing that I wanted to pursue something else.

Around the same time, I had taken my first acting class with DC’s KenYatta Rogers. His class revolutionized the way I thought about acting and theatre as a mechanism for change. It was also while I started to do more theatre in college that I realized the DC area had a thriving regional theatre scene that I could step into, something I had no idea was possible.

In any industry, you have to get some kind of training and experience. Coming from an immigrant father and Jamaican American mother, education was paramount. So even though me being an artist was not their number one choice, getting a degree was that security that both they and I needed to feel confident in pursuing theatre.

Since that first acting class, I’ve really went full send into theatre. I completed my bachelor’s at the University of Maryland, College Park in Theatre Performance and worked as an actor and theatre administrator for a couple years before pursuing my MFA in Classical Acting with the Shakespeare Theatre Company Academy at the George Washington University. Over the past few years, I’ve performed as an actor at theatres such a Chesapeake Shakespeare Company, Compass Rose, Discovery Theatre, and Theatre Alliance.

I’ve only gotten to where I am because of the amazing teachers and mentors I have had along the way. I have also made so many friends and met some of the best collaborators in some of my classmates and cast mates who inspire me. I think the theatre community in the DC and Baltimore region is really a big family and, in my experience, we bolster each other up and root for one another.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It has definitely not been a smooth road. Between juggling crazy work schedules, finding time to practice, imposter syndrome, and an industry that doesn’t always pay their artists fairly, somehow we make it work. I think the biggest obstacle for a lot of people to really dive into their art is the financial burden of doing so. Artists should definitely be paid more. Arts institutions get some help from grants but I think subsidies that go directly to working artists would go a long way in showing the culture and arts sector that they are valued!

We have some really great art schools and organizations in our country but it’s not really the institutions that make the art at the end of the day, it’s the artists who join them.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am an actor and theatre creator who specializes in classical theatre as well as development of new works. I really enjoy working on new plays when the playwright is a part of the process. The more collaborative the room, the better. Theatre is a collaborative medium by nature; it’s a synthesis of different artists work. When we lean into that collaborative nature, the work that comes from it is always something incredibly unique and alive.

I think what sets me apart from other actors is my pluralist approach to the work. A huge part of my creative philosophy is this collaborative nature; so much of my work varies depending on what the show is calling for, who else is in the room, and the cultural moment as well.

When I create pieces of theatre by myself, I really enjoy fantasy that holds up a mirror to society. I wrote a few plays in college that I would like to continue developing; they are both fantasies that call out corruption in government and corporations.

Are there any important lessons you’ve learned that you can share with us?
Something a professor told me at Montgomery College that has stuck with me since is, ” If you have a plan B, you’re planning for plan A to fail.”
From then, I knew that I had to follow my passion wholeheartedly, even if I might fail. I know that at the end of the day, if I don’t become some famous actor, writer, or director, I’ll at least have made art that I’m proud of and will probably still be doing art in some way.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://aliekarambash.com
• Instagram: @prince_alie_

Image Credits
Headshots by James Mernin

Photography credits:

Alec Wild
Josh Hubbel
University of Maryland