After performing three sold-out shows at The Cultch in Vancouver last winter, Langley’s Kevin Kokoska is bringing his one-person play, The Mirror Test, to audiences a little closer to home.
On Nov. 4 at 7 p.m., Kokoska will perform at Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s Langley campus as part of Thrive Week — a week known as one of the most stressful for students.
This play will cap of a series of events the university is hosting to help build positive health and well-being for students, faculty and staff.
Kokoska, a DW Poppy grad, KPU basketball alumni and former youth worker on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, wrote The Mirror Test based on actual experiences he had while interning at a binge-eating disorder camp in California for his counselling psychology masters at UBC.
Starring Kokoska as himself, and the personalities of several other attendees at the camp, he captures the struggles he endured with trying to connect with youth who appeared to be very different from himself.
“There’s various characters in the play, but primarily it’s a relationship with me, or a version of me, and one other male camper that is a fictionalized person (and) a combination of different themes to create a character that mirrors off of me,” Kokoska explained in an interview with the Times in January.
The show is open to the public to attend, and 100 per cent of the proceeds will go to mental health initiatives for KPU students.
Tickets are available online at kpu.ca/events/mirror-test or by calling 604-599-2900.
Kokoska is also planning additional performances at a larger venue — the Orpheum Annex in Vancouver — in December.
More is available at www.kokoska.co/mirror.