Kersti - "Rhymes with Thirsty"
Kersti works as an actor, Filmmaker, writer, producer and adventurer based in NYC.
As an actor, Kersti has worked Off-Broadway, internationally and regionally in Film & Television and Theatre.
She has been nominated for the Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Actress in a Large Theatre and for Best Supporting Actress at the Madrid IFF for her performance in Ryan Denmark’s Hell’s Heart. She received the Adelyn Roth Levine Excellence in Acting Award from Carnegie-Mellon University.
Kersti’s first Film EGG PARTY won the Panavision First Time Filmmaker Grant and Audience Awards at Cinequest Film Festival and Coven Film Festival. She was nominated for Best Director at Jim Thorpe Film Festival, among other awards.
As an adventurer, she has been paragliding in Nepal, sky diving in Siberia and trekked solo through Croatia, Jordan, Israel, and Palestine. She received a Theatre Communications Grant for theatre work in Russia and was a TCG U.S. Delegate to Havana, Cuba in 2015.
Kersti has been in residency at Eugene O'Neil Theatre Center, with Fresh Ground Pepper Theatre and has her own production company, Violet's Umbrella. She is a proud member of the AEA and SAG-AFTRA.
Kersti studied acting at Interlochen Arts Academy and then Carnegie-Mellon University and the Moscow Art Theatre.
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Personal Note.
Born in Golden, Colorado (home to Coors Beer) to a pair of docs, (her mother is a physician and her father has a PhD in geo-statistics) Kersti grew up in a home of scientists who loved and supported the arts.
Her passion for acting began when she was very little. She was able to persuade her three beloved siblings to mount full productions of innovative and original works such as TEACUP, ME? and DRAMA ON THE KITCHEN FLOOR. Everyone received rave reviews and spaghetti.
Kersti's first "scripted" role was in the Golden High School theatre where she ***starred*** in the pivotal role of the APOTHECARY in ROMEO & JULIET. She was hooked and couldn't get enough.
Part of a very tight-knit family, her siblings are brother singer-songwriter/drag artist Bay Bryan. Her younger sister Reyna Bryan is an inventor and business strategist for a green planet for her company Rainchild Design, and her older sister Shahara Mattingly is an established health and wellness nutrition shaman.
Surprise fact: Kersti began training as a classical harpist at age 7.
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