Kira Onodera is an actor, director and writer from the Bay Area. She started acting at age10 and her first professional theater experience came at age 14 for the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival. She worked with the festival again years later with Dan Chumley (San Francisco Mime Troupe) while attending the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of The Arts. You could say that her first ever role was in her sister’s (Lisa Onodera) thesis project at age 5 for the UCLA film school.

Kira attended SUNY Purchase’s prestigious acting Conservatory and within a year of graduating performed in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (with favorable mention in the local reviews) and was in her first independent film produced, directed and written by Seth Eisman and Chachi Senior.  In “Fontanel” Kira plays Candy, a 15 year-old anorexic who falls in love with her teacher at an all girls Catholic school.

In her many years in NYC Kira transitioned from an actor for hire to writer/director in 2004 when she started working on a one woman show “The Crease Question” at the Michael Chekhov Theater Company (back when it was a tiny black box in the lower east side). MCTC nurtured the show in its beginning stages, and it continued on to be included in the first Starbucks Salon in SoHo during fashion week in the fall of 2005. The Salon participants were selected by a panel of writers and artists at GenArt; she performed on the same bill as DMC (RUN DMC) and Jonathan Lethem. “The Crease Question” was also part of the Manhattan Theater Source’s Estro-genius Festival, People’s Improv Theater and the Manhattan Repertory Theater’s Winter Fest. In 2010 it was given a special one night only performance by the producers of “Dairy of a Teenage Girl” at 3-Legged Dog. Kira currently seeks a dedicated venue for a full run of the “The Crease Question.”

In 2008 Kira developed the character of May Kasahara with co-writer/director Stephen Earnhart over the course of three workshop productions of Murakami’s “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle”. The performances took place at 3LD and Asia Society where she performed with Steve Park and Michelle Krusiec.

Kira continues to act in other theater artists’ projects and was last seen in Theater for a New City’s “Big Flower Eater” a devised piece directed by Victoria Linchong in Winter of 2013.

Her latest projects include a focus on directing. At the 52nd Street Project she directed Jeanine Serralles and Carra Patterson in Camile Bernard’s (age 10) one act play “The Big Bash between Bash and Smash”. In the Fall of 2012 Kira worked with Leviathan Lab on Migration Nation, a site specific work about Overseas Filipino Workers at Space on White. She directed two pieces – “Super Maids” by Eileen Rivera and  “Pros and Cons” by Nancy Eng. Her latest directing/dramaturgy project, “A Fallopian Fairytale” a one woman show by Marisa Marquez premiered at the New York International Fringe Festival. “ The show is also featured in the United Solo Festival 2013.