SPOKANE, Wash, – This weekend at Lilac City Comicon one Broadway and Disney+ actor is finally making his return to Spokane after around 13 years away from his hometown.
Dmitrious Bistrevski was born in Ukraine and then moved and was raised in Spokane. He went to Rogers High School.
After he graduated, he owned a small janitorial company here locally, but it was not fulfilling his passion and he wanted to learn how to backflip, so he went to a local gymnastics gym where he ended up getting a job as a coach.
That’s when he fell in love with presenting and being vulnerable, so he signed up for theatre classes at Spokane Community College.
He ended up loving acting so much that he moved to LA with his brother even though he did not know anybody down there. He ended up meeting a random woman at Starbucks who got him interested in circus school.
That’s when he moved to Montreal, which he calls the “LA” of circus, where he ended up being an understudy for Cirque du Soleil. He stayed there until he realized he would likely never get a starting role, which is when he moved back to LA and focused on being a stuntman and learning new skills.
Bistrevsky landed a gig in Pippin on Broadway and toured the country before getting serious injuries to his head and knee that led him to focus on acting again.
That’s when the people filming the Obi-Wan Kenobi series on Disney+ found out that Bistrevsky perfectly fits the skillset and size needed for the role of Darth Vader. He auditioned and landed the gig.
Bistrevsky spent 9 months straight studying and perfecting his role and after they filmed the show, he was a new man for all he had accomplished.
“How does [Darth Vader] switch from being the chosen one to becoming the worst villain in cinema history,” said Bistrevsky. “That fall is a huge fall and I’ve experienced it firsthand.”
Now Bistrevsky is back in Spokane for the first time to speak at Lilac City Comicon on Saturday at 1 p.m.
He’s hoping to inspire people to chase their dreams whether they have money behind them or not.
