Valeka Jessica expects Launchpad to lift her solo show to new heights.
Actress/playwright Valeka Jessica’s ex-husband planted the seeds of her success when he walked out in 2019.
She learned about the break upon Facebook when returning from London, where she was working on a one-woman show about the couple’s fertility struggles, Did You Take Your Clomid?
Through 10 years of marriage, “I was pouring more into my husband’s dreams than I was my own,” Jessica says. “When we finally divorced, all of the things that I had ever wanted just started coming to me.”
She bought a Ford Mustang convertible. Her credit score jumped 200 points. She moved from Macon to Atlanta. She wrote a self-help book, Blossoming After Divorce: 11 Tips to Manifest the Goddess Within.
Her flourishing continues with a new version of her solo show, now titled I’m a Mother F—- Superstar, at Theatrical Outfit’s Launchpad 2.0: A “Made in Atlanta” Festival on July 17, 19, 24 and 26.
“It’s not about hating him, being mad at him,” Jessica says about her ex-husband. “But what can I do to heal myself so that I can move on and be a better woman?”
She plays eight characters, ranging from her ex-husband to a raspy voiced truth-teller named Keysha whom she developed over two years of open-mic standup comedy after taking a class at Dad’s Garage.
“Keysha’s the one character that people have met, and they love her,” Jessica says. “They love her more than Valeka.”
Now 43, the D.C. native built a stage career in her hometown after earning an MFA across the country at the University of Washington.
Trying to save money for invitro fertilization, Jessica and her husband moved to Macon, where her dad lived. She also made theater connections in Atlanta.
“Atlanta started to be this amazing place where I was building incredible community for myself,” she says. So after the divorce she moved to the city in November 2020. Her first show here was a True Colors Theatre production of School Girls; or, the African Mean Girls Play. She expanded into directing; launched a production company, The V Network; and ran a side business, Midtown Atlanta Notaries. But as the name of her show indicates, she knew she belonged in the spotlight.
“I love telling stories. I know that I have a gift,” Jessica says.
She also has acted in movies, such as 2025’s Urban Flesh Eaters, and had small TV roles. But the theater is her first love.
“The theater is the most beautiful, the most welcoming place,” she says. “You just can’t walk onto a studio lot, right? You just can’t walk into Warner Bros. You just can’t walk into Tyler Perry Studios. But you can walk up to a theater, and someone will answer the door, and you can introduce yourself.”
Her Atlanta introduction was an audition at Theatrical Outfit, so she says she’s come full circle to have one of the four shows featured at Launchpad. The incubator provides resources to propel pioneering work.
Jessica has no doubt the program will help her theatrical garden grow worldwide, “telling stories the way that I want to tell them, big, bold, brassy stories.”
theatricaloutfit.org/launchpad
@valeka_valeka_valeka
