By Kelsey Klassen
Long before Dianna David could educate others with her one-woman show, she had to take a closer look at herself.
Behind the face paint and carefully rehearsed routines about acceptance and tolerance is a woman who was, at one time, playing a character in her own life.
Frustrated with the view from her rung on the corporate ladder, David left her job as a successful San Francisco-based mechanical engineer and enrolled in clown school. And, no, her parents werent happy about it.
Despite fostering an incredible dance ability from a young age, David encountered mostly fear and disappointment from her parents that she was making a reckless decision.
The 25-year-old daughter of Filipino immigrants had more changes in store. Upon leaving Edmonton after a visit home, she was connecting through Vancouver to her return flight to San Francisco when she got stopped at the border.
Told she had outstayed her visa and couldnt cross, David picked up the phone for another hard conversation with her family. Feeling she couldnt go back to Edmonton and easily pursue performance art, David decided in the departure terminal of YVR to make San Franciscos sister city her home.
Well-respected in the Filipino community in Edmonton, David says for the first few years of her do-over, her parents felt shame. Often compared to begging in her culture, she knew street performing lacked the esteem of her previous career.
Ironically, it was the story of her fathers move to Canada that inspired her decision to become a clown. He was shocked when she told him, It was your dream to go abroad and now I have a new life here. Well, I have a dream too.
Eight years later, David can speak candidly on the difficult choices she credits with her success.
Mentored upon her arrival to Vancouver by prominent local comedian David C. Jones, David says her friend pushed her out of her comfort zone. She was one of the original women to join his troupe, The Bobbers Queer Comedy Improv, and she began street performing while establishing herself though events and corporate gigs in Vancouver as an artist to watch.
When the 2010 Olympics arrived in Vancouver, she and her creative partner Charity Zapanta embraced the spirit and produced a festival called I Heart Van Art to bring together other artists in Vancouver and celebrate the city.
Her talent was noticed, and she was encouraged by a local grant writer to seek funding from the government to turn her stable of characters into a show.
Incorporating hip hop dance with contact juggling, miming, video screens and multiple characters, David took the $25,000 grant and created a product she classifies as movement storytelling, or Charlie Chaplin meets Michael Jackson, which she tours to schools around the province.
Even after performing to rave reviews for more than 100,000 children, David still brims with enthusiasm for her new life. She struggles, though, to discuss her proudest accomplishment her new relationship with her parents.
Her voice breaks as she describes the sense of contentment that came over her when she flew them to Vancouver last November to watch her Canadas Got Talent audition. It was the first time they had seen her home. It was pretty touching, she says, pausing to compose herself, to have my mom really know that Im taken care of, seeing what my work has done and that Im okay.
Since she decided to dance and play for a living, the highlight has surely been proving to her parents that success comes from doing what you love.
The whirlwind of discovery has ultimately broken down the barriers of communication in her family, but more importantly, allowed her to finally master one of the first rules of clown school: Find your authentic self.
David is launching a new website at the end of February.
