Tools
Starvin' Artists
Wanting to Be a Princess
Stranger Personals
Why did you start acting?
SUSANNA: I went to an alternative high school in Seattle called Nova--which still exists--and part of Nova's mission was to get the students to look ahead to what they wanted to do and provide opportunities for you to go into the community and do that. What sprang immediately to mind was to be an actress, which I thought sounded ridiculous. I thought, "Everybody wants to be an actor; that's like wanting to be a princess." But my coordinator gave me names of local fringe theaters around town; I started sewing costumes backstage and then I was hooked.
DEBRA: I got involved in acting because I was competitive and it was something I could win. I know that's really sick. The Gaslight Community Theatre in Enid, Oklahoma, had a teen theater program; they were doing Barefoot in the Park. I went down to the theater and I got the lead, and I loved it. In college I studied psychology, but I was still keeping touch with theater along the way; I wasn't going to be an actress, so it was just fun. Then my husband encouraged me to explore that option. I decided that maybe I could make a career out of it.
NICK: I'd never even seen a play until sixth grade. I saw The King and I and it blew my mind. There were all these kids in the show and I was like, "Oh my god!" To get to do that and stay up late, and they would go to the Red Robin afterward and they'd all still be wearing their makeup--"Oh my god this is so cool!" So I started doing all this children's theater. I was one of those annoying, freaky auteur kids asking everybody about writing plays and reading everything that I could. It was kind of creepy. Then I moved up here and went to Northwest School; it was like an art school. We had to build the sets and write our own shows. We did everything. I didn't go to college for theater, because I knew what I wanted to do so deeply in high school--it was scary, like a possession.
IAN: Part of it was to be like my brother; he was in plays and I loved that. But theater became this addictive thing--I was the kind of kid that, on family vacations, if we were at some Pennsylvanian historic thing I'd start leading tours, just making up stuff: "Oh, over there's where old man Hutchkiss died." Luckily I had very patient parents. As the youngest, I always had a captive audience, so I quickly learned to enjoy being on the stage. It's just this endless pool; there's so much to do in it.
A Little Paycheck to Help It Along
All of you started in fringe theater but have recently begun making money from acting. What has that transition been like?
SUSANNA: I'm still doing fringe theater; in fact, I make my living doing primarily voice-over work. Almost four years ago I wanted to get away from the day job, so that my energy would be focused more toward things that were meaningful to me. Now my day job is voice-over work, and I have to schedule my life that way: "I might be able to have lunch with you, but I might have a booking, so I don't know." The one element that hasn't changed yet for me is doing professional theater.
IAN: I just want to work. I will take anything--especially when I first got to Seattle. Now, luckily, because of commercials and voice-overs and stuff like that, I can do a fringe play because I really want to, regardless of whether it pays or not. There's a period where you have to pay your dues--yeah, I'm playing Captain Kirk for six months [in Star Drek at AHA! Theatre]. Actually that was a very fun time, but there have been very bad experiences. I would not want to mention the examples. It's nice when it's paying; if I'm going to do a production I'm not wild about, it's great when there's a little paycheck to help that along. But it's really nice to be able to do something because I really like it.
NICK: I haven't had a day job in the last three years. I'm also doing things like voice-over work and commercial things. I have done some professional theater; I got my Equity card finally, and that was a weird transition doing that first professional show--especially doing the Humana Festival [a new play festival at Actors Theatre of Louisville], where they treat you so beautifully. I was doing a show at Re-bar and then flew to Louisville, and someone's always got your props waiting for you; they're always feeding you; you're put up in beautiful housing; and you get paid really well. I made so much money doing that gig because you spend no money in Louisville. I think that's where the fringe theater stuff really pays off and makes you a better person; I was working with a lot of people who had done a lot of professional theater and were like [in a blasé voice], "Oh, can I get some coffee?" I was making the coffee in the corner all the time.
DEBRA: The transition for me was somewhat terrifying, because all of a sudden I was SAG [the Screen Actors Guild], AFTRA [American Federation of Television & Radio Artists], and Equity [the stage actors' union]; I was fully unionized and completely unemployed because of the commercial strike and the bottom falling out of the television and commercial market here. I was doing films, but it was for experimental contracts under SAG, which means no money, so for about six months after I joined Equity it was nothing. Then--praise God--The Fugitive came along. So they fly me to South Carolina and I'm sitting in this great hotel, and, "Oh, here's an envelope of money for you while you're here." It was incredible! I got paid for three days of work and never did a thing. They have to pay you to fly there, to fly back, and for that day of shooting, but they never actually got to me. I sat on the set all day and didn't do a thing. When I got back to the hotel, one of the actors--who shall remain nameless, although not THE fugitive--really put the moves on me. I'd never experienced that kind of wining and dining: "Hey, I've done a lot of plays" (and he had done some amazing work in New York). I thought, "Eeew, I need to take a shower and cash my check." In three days I did nothing but get hit on and made more money than I had in theater all year.
This Humble Thing
SUSANNA: When I got out of college, I went straight into an internship at the Portland Stage Company in Maine, and I got immediately disillusioned. I looked around and said, "These people might as well be plumbers." They come up from New York with their little kit; they look for a person to have an affair with; and the work gets completely ground into the dirt by the time the show opens. Everybody marches through it mechanically. All the love was squeezed out of it, to the point where I quit acting for a year. I ended up moving to Seattle to be near my family. When the urge to act came back, I found Annex almost immediately; I walked in and went, "Oh right, it's about the love." I had to find that love again, which I did for the next eight or nine years. Of course, now I feel I get the love, and I'm ready for the paychecks.
DEBRA: I'm curious about why we think that's so amazing, because that's what other people do. They have their lives and they have their jobs and they get paid. There's a feeling--I've felt this since I moved here--that we don't deserve it, or if I get paid I'm giving up my art.
IAN: There's this feeling that no one's allowed to get too big for his britches--which I love about Seattle, but it cultivates this humble thing....
DEBRA: It's great, but also damning. When I did finally get auditions at ACT or the Rep, I was so "Thank you so much!" that I wasn't putting my best foot forward, because I wasn't confident.
IAN: I came here in the '80s from New York, where you go to an audition and you follow up with a postcard that has your headshot on it, saying, "Thank you very much"--all of this career stuff. Seattle's a little more homey, and during that period in the early '90s there were so many theaters, all this stuff was going on, but one thing that amazed me was this attitude: "Those damn established theaters, they don't do real theater."
DEBRA: In order to pay you, they have to sell tickets and they have to get grants; I think that's what actors lose sight of. Okay, Tacoma Actors Guild is doing that sort of milquetoast season with one Shakespeare and one comedy and one this and that, and you know what? They sell out; their patrons love to come; and they can pay artists, scenic designers, and costume designers.
IAN: There is a way of selling tickets and doing good art. I see just as many bad productions in fringe theaters as I do at professional houses. The nature of theater is, you get your audience in, and every now and then you get a really kick-ass show. But the idea that if you get to the Rep, you're somehow selling out--that attitude isn't so prevalent anymore, but for quite a while I was afraid of it, thinking, "No, man, I'm an edgy artist."
NICK: But everyone wants to get paid.
DEBRA: Of course they do. That's the choice you make, though: Is this your career and are you going to send the postcards and follow up, do the general auditions and pester them, or are you--I don't want to say just doing theater, but that's what I saw when I was doing things at Annex and I was promoting my work. Other people weren't. It was this "If they come, great; if they don't, that's fine." But I would like to make money at this, so to do that, I have to act as if I were self-employed.
The Equity Pool
If the paying theaters do a narrower range of work, does that mean that an actor must choose that narrower path if he wants to make a living at it?
NICK: There are different kinds of actors. Some actors don't mind doing any part, and other actors have a lot of experience making shows and being part of that process of creating a work of art. That kind of actor is never going to be happy no matter how wonderful the play--you're always going to want to get your hands dirty.
DEBRA: You take the good and the bad. I'm doing this Bon Marché commercial for mattresses, which is not art, but it sure pays a lot. You may be doing these cookie-cutter seasons as an Equity actor, and you would also like to do some other artistic work. That's why Equity needs to allow other contracts, so that the smaller theaters can bring actors back.
IAN: There's a... I better be careful here... there's a series of actors in this town from the '70s who are still the actors in this town who get the paying gigs, and until something shifts....
DEBRA: They probably have mortgages to pay. They have children.
IAN: Absolutely--they've paid their dues.
Is it hard to break in to the Equity casting pool?
SUSANNA: It is. But when I started out as a teenager in the '70s, those guys were duking it out in the basements. I had such respect for them then, when the Empty Space was upstairs above Pike Street. I mean, bless their hearts, they hung in there. They deserve it.
DEBRA: The real grudge comes in--everybody says it, and I'll just say it, too--when they've brought somebody in from New York or L.A., when there are people here who could do the job as well, if not better.
SUSANNA: The reason they bring in that actress, when 10 actresses in town could easily do it, is credits.
DEBRA: All the soap operas they've been on--apparently audiences care.
SUSANNA: It sells tickets. If you're going to pay $40 to see The Glass Menagerie, you want to see somebody who's been on Broadway or on a soap opera.
New York/Seattle/Phoenix
IAN: A friend of mine was saying, "Why don't you go to New York?" In New York there's no ceiling on how high you could go. If you want to act in small theaters you could do that; you could become the most famous actor in the world--all in New York. But there is a different kind of ceiling; there's no way I could do my own work. There's an amazing artistic freedom here. I could not put the money, the time, and the resources together in New York, and I could borrow a lot of space here.
NICK: Why do you have to choose one or the other? Everybody was like, "Oh you moved to New York," and I was like, "NO, I worked here for a while; I'm going to go back, but I'm in Seattle now, and I go back and forth." I prefer that; I don't like staying in one place for too long. Not everyone can do that--people have families; people have lives--but you can work everywhere. That's how you make money. You do regional stuff. Most actors I know in New York are constantly leaving town.
IAN: Seattle actors are also Phoenix, Arizona, actors.
DEBRA: I was going to head down to L.A. this past year, but all I ever wanted was to make a living here. Not a great living, but I thought I could be employed whether it's a commercial or whatever, and I found for the first four years I was here that I couldn't. If I had been on my own, I could not have paid my rent. I was doing free theater so I could do the paid theater. New actors and new artists just can't make a living, unless you really luck out or you know somebody or you interned someplace and you're really hooked in.
IAN: In Seattle you have to be at the edge of the pier with about eight fishing lines out there, because sometimes it might be a radio gig; sometimes it might be TV; sometimes it might be a commercial. In L.A., you can be just a commercial actor and make a living.
You're a Prostitute, but You're Really Nice
SUSANNA: When I was doing my one-woman show, two or three times I got calls: "You can do The Fugitive, but you have to block out the next two weeks," and I'd worked too hard on this solo piece to cancel performances. But film auditions are so rare; you get the call six months out and they say, "Okay, we've got a film." "Okay, great!" "You're a prostitute, and you're giving a guy a blowjob, but you're really nice," or something. And you get the text and it's awful, awful, but I see these casting people only once every six months, so I have to go in.
DEBRA: But it is sort of a win-win situation. If you go in and you do your best, even if the script sucks or you don't get the job, you're always making connections; you're always meeting people; and you would be surprised how often you get a call: "Hi, this is so-and-so; I saw you at an audition a year and a half ago."
SUSANNA: I signed a five-year contract recently with a national voice-mail company. In the first session, I'm standing there going, "Please hold the line while we transfer you to..."--you know, whatever. And I thought, 10 years ago when I got out of college, and I couldn't even word-process, I was a temporary receptionist for seven bucks an hour in Boston. Now I'm an automated receptionist, making some ridiculous amount of money, but using that same skill.
NICK: When I first got to New York, a friend recommended acting at children's parties. I went to this early-morning interview in this basement where they had all the huge puppets and costumes and party supplies. I handed my resume to this horrible man who said, "A cowboy party, Western theme--what do you do?" So I said, "You make a corral in the room and you dress all the kids up like animals, and they have to go around and get to know each other," and he goes, "No!" "Okay, one of the kids is wanted in seven counties and the other kids have to chase him and shoot at him," and he says, "NO, that won't work." So I try, "You dress the little girls up like prostitutes in a brothel and the little boys--" "No." I'm like, "What the fuck?" He says, "Be a cowboy. Be a COWBOY." I asked, "You're really enjoying this, aren't you?" And he said, "Yes, I am." I walked out of the interview; I said goodbye. And they still called me: "Do you want to work this party tonight? I'll pay you." That was when I thought, "My god, you really can prostitute yourself."
IAN: Some of us are still living in that world. I'm wearing a caterpillar suit this month so I can afford just do to theater.
DEBRA: You're the caterpillar guy [on the Money Tree ads]!
IAN: That's not for publication! Oh my god! I actually got a call from an eight-year-old girl in Idaho who didn't want Barney, didn't want Big Bird, didn't want any of the things you could rent for kids' birthday parties. It was pretty cool that, in a little girl's heart, I beat Barney. Unfortunately, I refused to go out to Idaho to wear the... uh, the suit.
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