After graduating from the Boston Conservatory, Ada was immediately cast on
Broadway in
Bombay Dreams. He then perfected his Shakespearean skills with the Publick Theatre in plays such as
Troilus and Cressida. In parallel to this work, Ada came up with an original text based on his personal experiences during the Soviet invasion of his home-country, his difficult journey to relocate and integrate into
Western culture and the hurdles of being an Afghan in America following the
September 11 attacks. This piece,
The Canny Afghani, premiered at the Boston Center for the Arts in 2004 as Ada's first one-man show. He would explain that: Back in Canada, Ada made a name for himself during three seasons of the
Shaw Festival, along with parts in productions of The Grand, Canadian Stage and Cahoots Theatre. His performances were appreciated and earned him
The Shaw Festival Outstanding Newcomer award in 2007 and the
Stage West – Equity Emerging Theatre Artist Award the next year. His subsequent role in
Paper SERIES drew further attention and earned him a nomination for a
Dora Award. After that, he was cast as a lead in
My Granny the Goldfish, after which he was consistently given leading parts. Eventually, he would even be established enough as an actor that he did not have to audition anymore. In 2014, Ada wrote his second play,
The Wanderers, which combines comedy, kinky sex, suicide, ghosts, hysteria, nudity and religious imagery, on the backdrop of an otherwise timeless tale of father-son conflict. Although the production of the play by Cahoots Theatre garnered mixed reviews, the depth and richness of the text would soon be rehabilitated and go on to be studied in universities. The movie premiered at the ReelWorld Film Festival where it was received well. The next year, Ada was highly praised for his part in
Accidental Death of an Anarchist. Theatre critic Amanda Campbell declared that "Kawa Ada, as the Madman, is a breathtaking tour de force, bursting with energy and words and playful shenanigans that cascade out of him with breakneck speed and formidable urgency.", while Robert Crew of The Star wrote: "Kawa Ada is a marvel in the role. He swaggers, skips, hops into someone’s lap, overacts to the hilt, mugs and wows the audiences with a smile that could melt a Newfoundland iceberg." The performance earned him a
Dora award, and he was named
NOW Magazine's ''Toronto's Best Male Actor
. This success was immediately followed, the same year, by another noted performance in Bombay Black''. In this play, Ada was cast as Aspara, a young female dancer who makes a living by dancing for men in private. At first, he was reticent to "take away" a role written for a woman, but he was convinced to take on the challenge as an opportunity to question
gender in a
patriarchal society. He choreographed himself the dances, which were deemed "enchanting" and "impossibly ethereal". The hard work that went into Ada's interpretation of Aspara was praised, eventually earning him the
Toronto Theatre Critics Award for Best Male Actor of the Year. In a radio interview, he explained his artistic approach thusly: {{blockquote|"For me it was really important to honour playing a woman, and that I wasn't just playing
at it. So I didn't want to wear a dress, I didn't want to wear make-up. So that's the other thing we're inviting the audience to do: I'm in very
androgynous costume, and we're asking the audience to
imagine that I'm a woman simply through my "
acting ability". And so we'll see if it's successful or not, but the other thing was immense research (which is what I would do for any role), but this entailed talking to a lot of women,
South-Asian women friends, about what it is to be a woman. [...] What was challenging was
truly getting into my feminine side and accepting it, and it brought about a lot of the turmoil that I had in my own coming to terms with
sexuality." In 2017, Ada lent his voice to Razaq in the animated feature film
The Breadwinner, based on
the best-selling novel by
Deborah Ellis, which had its world premiere at the
2017 Toronto International Film Festival. In addition to his voice performance, Ada was a dialect and accent coach to his fellow actors on set. As of 2018, Ada is a playwright in residence at Tarragon Theatre, where he is working on his next play,
Finding Islam, the story of a mother investigating the disappearance of her son, who is suspected to have joined
ISIS. During this time he has also taught as an acting professor at the
George Brown Theatre School. == Other careers ==