We recently had the chance to connect with Kim Lehl and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Kim , thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day to share your story, experiences and insights with our readers. Let’s jump right in with an interesting one: What battle are you avoiding?
I love this question because it has changed so much since I was younger. I am not afraid of confrontation, but I have not always been willing/able to engage for the right reason. Today I am willing to pay the price to fight for what I think is right, or when someone I love is at the receiving end of a selfish injury inflicted by another. As I have gotten older, I have spent many hours thinking about what battles matter and can make a difference and what battles are ego driven because I need to prove something. I think it took me a lot of years to understand the difference. The clarity only came to me when I understood the difference between needing to win and wanting to help. When I let go of thinking I am only successful by “winning” and started to look at my situations through the lens of “how does everyone win in this situation,” my view and understanding of what Social Justice and community engagement can mean grew exponentially.
Today I understand, I don’t win unless everyone else wins first. As an actor and a director, I have had several instances in the last few years where either someone directly or unknowingly hurt my feelings when I was vulnerable. I had a shift in my response when I understood that fighting some of these battles would hurt the entire team. The greatest power I have is to make mistakes and be humble and be willing to apologize and also accept apologies.
Great art cannot be 100% safe if it is going to be great – it must involve risk as part of the process. The late, great Gene Frankel told me at the beginning of my career path; “You will never be great until you are willing to be bad.” I believe that. Allowing yourself to be bad in your process to performance takes guts and hard work. The battles I am willing to fight today are the ones where any individual or artist belittles another artist by laughing at them, being cruel, mocking them or disregarding their unique gifts in their process. My job is to check my ego at the door. I find in most instances there is no battle when you are the first one to lay down your sword.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
My name is Kim Tobin-Lehl and this question is hard for me to answer briefly. I am an actor/director/teacher/producer/co-founder of one of Houston’s 6 Equity Theatre’s; 4th Wall Theatre Company: 4thwalltheatreco.com. Of all the things I have been part of in my years dedicated to this craft I am most proud of the theatre my husband and I built. 4th Wall began 15 years ago with a mission dedicated to a particular aesthetic of performance and to make paying artists our first priority. We have been very successful in this directive. My husband; Philip Lehl and I have now stepped away from the Artistic Director position and passed our torch on to Jennifer Dean. Since our inception we have hired Actor’s Equity Artists for every single show we have ever produced. Supporting the Actors’ union has been extremely important to us. Every year our theatre hires on average 12-15 Equity artists for our season where our average number of artist is 22. I am extremely proud of this!
I also have worked very hard to be a resource for the other theatre companies in town so as to help them have access to a service that allows them to hire equity artists and process their payroll through my temporary help service. It has been very important to me to make hiring equity artists easy and affordable to the smaller Houston theatre companies in Houston. As a theatre community we are only as strong and successful as we are as a community, not as individuals.
I am currently working as a Resident Artist at 4th Wall and serving on the board with my husband to help usher in and support the next growth cycle in making sure 4th Wall stays strong and continues to grow and offer equitable pay opportunities for Houston artists and designers and creates extraordinary theatre experiences for Houston audiences.
Thanks for sharing that. Would love to go back in time and hear about how your past might have impacted who you are today. What relationship most shaped how you see yourself?
There are a lot of people who have shaped how I see myself. But, my grandfather had the deepest impact on the clarity of how I see myself. The events in my life that I remember most clearly when I think of “who I am” are things that happened with my grandfather. He looked at me when I was little like I was so special. Not special like “better than anyone else”, but special because of how much I made him understand love in his love for me – I could see it in his eyes. I can only articulate that now as a much older woman. This clarity comes to me in the reflection of our time together and in my own maturity and deeper understanding of what love looks. like.
There is a story I like to share that sums up how limitless my grandfather made me feel.
I was a little water baby from like 2 years old. My grandfather and I would swim all the time and one day when I was about 4 years old my grandfather and I were at the community swimming pool. I used to love to jump off the high dive (they don’t have these 3 meter boards anymore but they did when I was growing up). So, my grandfather would take me to the ladder that went up to the board and as I started to walk up the ladder he would go and get in the water under the high dive and wait for me below. I remember I would get up on the high dive and I would waddle out to the end of the board and I could see my grandfather down in the water below. Then I would jump off the board down into the water and my favorite thing was seeing my grandpa reach his arms down in the water and scoop me up to the surface and we would laugh and laugh. I could do that all day. Then one day when my grandfather was walking me back to our chairs at the side of the pool after our diving board session, a lifeguard stopped my grandfather and said to him; “Don’t you think it is a little dangerous for her to be up there doing that being so little?” And my grandfather said to that lifeguard; “You don’t get to decide what she should or shouldn’t be afraid of only she gets to decide that.” I remember that like it was yesterday. I remember my little hand in his big hand and he looked down at me and winked. I didn’t only understand I was loved, but I knew I was free to be anything I wanted.
Was there ever a time you almost gave up?
Was there ever a time you almost gave up? The better question is how do you keep going and not give up? I feel like I almost give up all the time. I think what I have learned by that is that I put myself at risk for a lot for failure. And I fail a lot too. But the reward for living in a manner that is about risk and doing things that scare you is how palpable life is. Routine makes me uncomfortable. I am always looking for the new door. I am not afraid of doors closing behind me. I feel like they are not endings, but simply life moving me toward new and unknown challenges. The battle to not quit is the battle with feeling not good enough. The most important obstacle in my life is myself and the battle between experiencing my value in this life as something I have to earn as opposed to understanding it is my birthright.
Alright, so if you are open to it, let’s explore some philosophical questions that touch on your values and worldview. What’s a belief you used to hold tightly but now think was naive or wrong?
That hard work will get you what you want. You can work harder than anyone you know and still not achieve or get into the career and/or success level you want or dream about. Hard work is a reward in itself but not a golden ticket to your dreams. Dreams are called dreams because they hold something that is intangible and involves an element of odds of success that inevitably includes luck. I used to believe hard work was the tool to circumventing the odds for success. I now know that is naive. Hard work cannot be attached to dreams because hard work will manifest results, but if the only interest you have in doing hard work is in achieving “your dreams”, you are likely to miss the rewards the work itself is producing now. If your head is in the clouds looking for future accolades you not only miss the joy available to you in the moment, but you often miss door(s) opening to you because of your hard work.
Thank you so much for all of your openness so far. Maybe we can close with a future oriented question. What is the story you hope people tell about you when you’re gone?
I always found this question odd. I have never thought I want people telling stories about me when I am gone. I don’t have any need for a legacy or any lasting residual presence here when I am gone. I hope I have helped some people here along the way and that is about it. When I am gone I hope everyone I knew who is still here is so busy and happy living their own lives that they have put mine to rest and moved on.
Contact Info:
- Website: Kim-tobin.com. 4thwalltheatreco.com
- Instagram: tobinlehl
- Facebook: Kim Tobin-Lehl
Image Credits
Photo Credits – All images: Gabriella Nissen
