AOK’s first artist-in-residence, actor Tatiana Chavez, has had quite a year. After a summer here in Cape Cod appearing in the Provincetown Theater’s production of Sweeney Todd, she returned to Boston for her senior year at Boston University. She wowed audiences as Othello in her final college production at BU and then attracted interest from several agents due to her amazing performance at the BU Showcase in New York City in early March. Then her senior year was turned completely upside down by the onslaught of the Corona Virus. After Showcase, she came to Wellfleet for a visit and while here the virus exploded and she decided to stay, rather than return to Boston or to her home in Washington, DC. Classes were all moved online. Her graduation ceremony was rescheduled for October. And her senior thesis–in normal times an intense, live performance of 10 components–was moved online. She seized the opportunity and after several weeks of intensive work, presented a bravura filmed performance that had teachers, fellow students, family and friends watching via Zoom/You Tube laughing our heads off one moment and bawling like babies the next. It was an incredible, transformational performance I know I’ll never forget.
And to top it all off, this week she received word that she had been awarded BU’s Bette Davis Prize for Excellence in Acting, given every year to a senior acting major. This is what BU had to say about Tati in their announcement of the prize: “Tati has grown exponentially in her path as an acting major through the School of Theatre. Her vivid, generous processes and portrayals have spoken to her transformational abilities and her dedication to her craft. Her hard work and dynamic imagination have yielded characters that are indelibly etched in our memories such as Free Girl in “…And Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi”, Othello in “Othello”, and Georgia in “The Exonerated” at SOT and Charlie in “The Tragic Ecstasy of Girlhood” at Boston Playwrights Theater. Tati has also been an invaluable volunteer, bringing her acting and mentoring skills to bear in the new course Diving Deep Into the Arts: Sharing Stories at the Suffolk County Jail sponsored by the CFA Prison Arts Initiative”
Words cannot describe how proud we are of Tati. She is not only incredibly talented, but equally kind and generous. We are so excited to see what comes next for Tati. And for being awarded the Bette Davis prize and for everything she has already accomplished at so young an age, we say: Brava!!