Starting a Career as a Professional Actor

[angel_vixen]

Situation: Young man from Good Family goes to school to study International Business at the urgings of his family. After graduation and working at a good job for about three years, he decides to follow his passion and study to become a professional actor. He does have experience in acting and working backstage (general stage hand), from school

Comments

[mmebahorel]

DC has a very large and constantly growing number of theatre companies, predominantly non-Equity for the small, new ones. There's a lot of work out there between community theatre (where he can build some credits), small non-eq companies (build some more credits and make $50), and larger mixed companies that really are still small theatre (Keegan, Forum, Constellation, Imagination Stage - companies on that level tend to mix Equity and non-Equity actors not by level of role but by how many Equity actors they can afford and/or people they particularly want to work with regardless of union status). The major companies also use non-Equity actors in small roles, and it is in those companies in particular that one can most easily build Equity eligibility points.

In DC theatre right now, there are working actors who did the career change thing and are making the community theatre to small company transfers. And not in small roles. No one is making good money at this (even people who work frequently for the big companies as Equity members have to have day jobs around here - one of our popular musical theatre actors who has worked on Broadway before now has a day job as a environmental lobbyist), but the place is big enough your character doesn't have to start out at the bottom role-wise, just company-wise. If he's willing to start low on the chain and has some good auditions and proves to be good to work with (directors around here do have their favourites, and just like any job, if they can hire a good worker again, they certainly will), you can cast him in any role you like in any show you like.

In addition, Discovery Communications is based in Silver Spring, Maryland (basically three blocks or so from the DC border - I live down the street), and they do a lot of filming in the area. National Geographic also does some filming, and the feds, before sequestration screwed with budgets, could also be counted on to have training videos or the like in production. So there's local film work in addition to the large amount of local stage work.

On the agent thing: DC theatre is still very personality based. It's who you know and showing up for open auditions more than an agent getting a booking for you. The big theatres are like this as much as the small theatres, but the big theatres also have a tendency to cast major roles and entire shows out of NY (thousands of actors are ostensibly NY based but never work in the city - they make the regional rounds year after year, hired during the yearly season auditions held in NY). Only in the past few years has a local agency opened up, started by an actor who resigned from Equity so he could go into this side of the business and the father of an up and coming actor (who then ended up in the national tour of War Horse). But it's had good support from the artistic directors here who have definitely realised they need to see more locals than just their regulars, that regulars at Woolly Mammoth and regulars at Signature may be of interest to each other for various projects that might otherwise have been cast out of town. This is still a town where you do not need an agent; your work here will build the resume that can get you seen by a NY agent.

Number of shows in a season an actor can do: Generally, a run will be 4, 6, or 8 weeks for a professional company, with a rehearsal period of about a month. It is also possible to rehearse one show while performing in a currently running show. Check out Tracy Olivera's schedule last season: she mostly does musical theatre and works consistently. She's currently rehearsing a new play that opens September 26. If you want busy, this is what busy looks like. Casting is frequently done by season rather than by show: a show may be third in the season, but auditions for it happen at the same time as the first one in the season. The little companies are more likely to cast show by show rather than the season at once.

(I'm not in the business, I just see an average of 75 or so shows a year in town. And I miss a lot of stuff because there really is too much to keep up with.)