Spring arts preview 2023: Theater artist Desireé Clarke is living her dream life in San Diego
This article originally appeared in the San Diego Union-Tribune - By Pam Kragen, March 18, 2023
Desireé Clarke poses on Golden Park Avenue on Feb. 20 in San Diego. (Brittany Cruz-Fejeran)
In just 18 months, the Boston native found work at many San Diego County theaters, from Diversionary to the Old Globe and La Jolla Playhouse.
When the pandemic hit three years ago this week, Desireé Clarke was like most other theater artists. She lost her job and struggled to find a way forward in uncertain times.
So without any work to keep her in Southern California, Clarke decided to take a trip to Oregon in June 2021 to figure out how to jump-start her life again. That’s when she had what she calls a spiritual experience that would guide her to a new hometown, San Diego, where today she is thriving as a much-in-demand multi-hyphenate artist.
The 35-year-old Clarke directed Diversionary Theatre’s “Monsters of the American Cinema,” which opened Saturday, and she’s about to direct Moxie Theatre’s “The Chronicles of Kalki,” which opens April 8. Besides that, she’s a teaching artist at the Old Globe and La Jolla Playhouse, and she has worked over the past 18 months as an actor, director, production manager and stage manager at several local theaters.
Desiree Clarke poses at the Lucy Evans Lauren Memorial Garden in San Diego on Feb. 20. (Brittany Cruz-Fejeran/For the San Diego Union-Tribune)
Her personal life is also humming. In May, she’ll marry fiancé Jonathan Miller, and officially become a stepmom to his daughter, Isabelle: “She’s the daughter I never knew I needed. They’re an incredible light in my life.” Read the full article here >