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Tonya Kay
Tonya Kay is an actress, TV personality, professional dancer and danger artist living in Los Angeles. A vegetarian of 28 years, vegan for 18 of those and raw vegan for the last 11, Tonya Kay pioneers the green health movement with appearances, publications and green media (available at KayosMarket). Watch Tonya Kay's self-produced web series The Eco Tourist on EcoHearth's Eco Tube. You may have also seen her recently on TV's My Ride Rules, The Tonight Show, Criminal Minds, Glee, House MD, Secret Girlfriend and American Idol with Rhianna. She has performed live in STOMP, De La Guarda, with Panic At The Disco, Kenny Rogers and in countless music videos and commercials. Look for Tonya Kay in the new Muppets Movie, starring in MTV Network's Video Game Reunion, playing a lead in the scripted animal-activist feature film, Bold Native, performing the voice of Green Girl in the raw vegan superhero animated film Rawman and Green Girl and performing burlesque live in Hollywood, California, almost any weekend. In 2012, Tonya Kay will star in the films Off World and Within The Darkness. For more on Tonya Kay, visit her website.
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We were given one rehearsal on-stage—about 10 minutes on the actual set to mark dimensions, lights, camera angles and choreography. That's not much time to add a set of stairs into a dance number. In fact, 10 minutes is not a lot of time to rehearse at all. But we burlesque dancers are used to bringing in a solo act and putting it on within the context of a grand production. We're fast and we work well under pressure.
Here is a sincere warning that goes out to anyone considering converting a car to run on waste vegetable oil (WVO) as I did: You are about to become a rock star. After only one visit, restaurants will know you by name, auto shops will call their friends to show you off, and people in the parking lot will want pictures with you with greasy hands. Thanks to recent television coverage, WVO is a fashionable topic in American living rooms, and when you arrive at the deli requesting dirty oil, they will act like you are their long-lost cousin and do everything but pinch your cheeks. 
Signing autographs in a different time zone each week. Waking early to make small talk on morning radio. Snarling as a dirty, corset-wearing character in front of thousands of shrieking teenagers from a sold-out stage at Madison Square Garden. Sometimes even I think it's play. But it's my job.
Oh, lovely life. I return home from a long day at the theatre with one mission: relax and take care of myself before early rehearsal again tomorrow—our first audience is Monday night. This is an intense time in the process. I open my screenless windows at midnight to let the blooming jasmine lurk in. I flop my shoes onto the wood floors and massage my own dancer feet. I am relaxing and taking care of myself the best way I can imagine. Oh, lovely life: This day ends with wine.
After the first time I volunteered over in Thailand with those magistrates of evolution, the Asian elephant (specifically with her daughters, their aunties and the oldest bull), I came back home to the United States with newly informed eyes.
