The creative evolution of Kasondra Rose

“I love performing,” Kasondra Rose said in a February, 2020 Catalyst interview, “and I’ve come to realize that I don’t much care the capacity.”

That’s become the manifesto for this talented St. Petersburg multi-hyphenate, who’ll debut a new one-woman show, Not-So-Starving Artist, this weekend in the Straz Center’s Shimberg Playhouse.

“It’s a show that doesn’t take itself seriously,” Rose explains. “So there’s a lot of self-deprecating moments. And behind me, while I’m singing, are a lot of the videos that I’ve created over the last several years.

“Some of them I’ve shined up or re-done for the show, but the general idea is still there. And the videos put a fun spin on the song that I’m singing.”

As a singer, songwriter and guitarist, Rose gigged for years around the bay area – and beyond – before shedding the “sensitive folkie” costume. She then went diving headfirst into other art forms, including aerial acrobatics, acting and cabaret stagework, in addition to performing as one of the lead singers in the much-admired Florida Bjorkestra.

She is on the teaching faculty at Aerial Dragons School of Circus Arts.

These days, Rose says, with the benefit of hindsight she’s fine-tuning. “If I never touched my guitar again, I would be fine,” she swears.

That’s because the mechanics of playing in public, from chasing gigs to negotiating rude bar managers to singing for indifferent audiences, wore her down. “I’m not done performing. But if performing only means playing an acoustic guitar and sitting in the corner of a restaurant or bar, I’m done. I never have to do that for the rest of my life.”

There’s a bit in Not-So-Starving Artist in which Rose sings the Cardigans song “Lovefool” (“Love me, love me, say that you love me ….”) as images of rejection emails, from jobs she never got, flood past on the video screen.

There are, she admits, hundreds of them. She keeps everything.

Still, “It’s not strictly autobiographical. You’re not going to learn about my whole life in the show, because who wants to know that?”

If you want to know, Rose is from Muskegon, Michigan, and she went to New York’s Marymount Manhattan College on a dance scholarship. She danced in Europe.

But the Big Apple – and college, as it turned out – weren’t for her. Rose relocated to Clearwater in 2002. For three years, she sang in a Tampa Bay Top 40 band called Shade.

Along with writing and singing songs, Rose taught herself to record using overdubs and layering. Soon, she made three records of original material, then discovered a desire and talent for aerial acrobatics and began “working the silks.” She also appeared in several Jobsite Theater plays.

In 2023 and 2024, she emceed and performed with Emerald Rabbit Cabaret at the Floridian Social. “That,” Rose recalls, “was kind of the start of ‘I would love to have my own show. I like building these individual acts for things.’”

What was a perpetually restless singer, dancer, etcetera to do? “I’ve always struggled to find where I’m supposed to be. I felt like I could fit in the cabaret, but I’m not sexy, I don’t have the burlesque vibe … I’m like the quirky, funny one. So where do you take that?”

“Moving forward,” for her, means putting this show together from scratch. There’s nothing like a challenge. “The eventual goal is to do guest entertainment work on cruise ships. You just make your own show, and then you sell it to whoever’s interested in buying it.”

The videos in Not-So-Starving Artist, as well as the recordings, have been remixed to Rose can do all the lead vocals live. Each song will have its own expositional introduction.

Unfortunately, spacial limitations means Rose can’t do aerial work for the Shimberg show. Dancing, on the other hand, is involved.

It’s being produced as a “Jobside” show by Jobsite Theater. These are small-ish productions done on the same days as a regular-season show.

In Rose’s case, she’s running parallel Saturday and Sunday with Penelope, starring her friend (and fellow Florida Bjorkester) Colleen Cherry.

“I didn’t mean for the timing to be like this,” points out Rose, “but she’s been nothing but gracious, and we’ve been co-promoting the shows.

“Because they have two one-woman shows in the Shimberg, running at the same time. And that’s pretty rad. That’s pretty powerful for the Tampa Bay area.”

Not-So-Starving Artist is performed a 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, and at 7 p.m. Monday, Aug. 24. Find tickets, and more information, at this link.