“I found my interest in theatre then, but my love for opera blossomed at University College London on the glorious stage of Bloomsbury Theatre while performing in front of 500 people,” she notes. “I was practically living in the theatre during opera season.” Now fluent in French, Tazlin moved to Paris upon graduation to pursue acting further; she was an instant devotee to the city’s film scene: “Everything I saw in the cinema was markedly different from what I saw everywhere else in the world. The films were more raw, visceral, more real, less gloss. I was intrigued with this ‘uncomfortableness’ —not a word, I know, but I wouldn’t quite use ‘discomfort’ to describe it.” Kalista had always found identity fluid and elusive, but as an actress she could finally center herself on that principle. Even if who you are and where you are constantly change, you can be home in your abilities. That’s what life on the go had been preparing her for, and that’s what she uses to advantage in her extraordinary performances time after time. In work, Tazlin is all about the individual’s journey. She’s drawn to characters who fight to overcome the most extreme odds. Taking on the principal role of a transgender girl in Date Night, a new work from award-winning playwright Jonathan Galvez, she not only brought audiences to tears but also found an unexpected kinship with that community’s struggles. And playing the pivotal role of the tragic Lark Ohta in the Discovery Channel series A Crime to Remember, Kalista confronted her greatest fears. Embodying the character of a boarding school student who returns home to find her whole family murdered (based on a true story), Kalista admits, “Playing Lark was one of the most emotionally challenging moments in my career. It was my biggest fear coming true. I was living alone in a foreign country; I see my parents four times a year, max. I always feared my family dying without me. When you’re away from home since youth, this fear remains and it informs my acting a lot.”
photo by Lisa Hancock
“The only thing I wanted to bring with me was my cello,” Kalista remembers. “I had a screaming fit with my mother and wanted to stay if he couldn’t come with us. That cello was my life, my home. It was painful. He should’ve been more portable.” HOME • SPRING 2017 | 65