Among industry gatekeepers, there are those who say significant New York experience—particularly New York stage experience—provides the training necessary to forge a career. Henry Ravelo of Ravelo Artists Management in New York takes it one step further: He contends that New York stage experience may be a significant selling point. "As a talent manager and producer," he says, "I know that if an actor can captivate live audiences for eight shows a week, then that actor is more apt to have what it takes to handle more-demanding situations—whether the role, the project, or the creative team itself."
"People coming out of New York are very well respected," says L.A.'s Dawson, "and there's always a hunger for that new talent. We've depleted our talent pool so much here that I think, whether it's New York or London or Australia or Canada, we're looking for that person who hasn't had three series—three failed series."
For some people, a New York actor is by definition a New York–trained actor. New York casting director Judy Henderson contends that most of the nation's top acting schools are still in or near the city: "The actors here are trained for theatre, and they don't 'melt.' In other words, they can get a script, they can break it down, they can make choices."
Henderson says that when she started casting, actors told her that the West Coast perceived New Yorkers as able to play only two things: Shakespeare and "street." That has changed in recent years, she says, and she attributes the shift to New York–based training programs, where classes in acting for the camera have proliferated. And New York–shot series like Law & Order and Sex and the City have added significant small-screen credits to many New Yorkers' résumés.
Still, "the Coast," as L.A. is often referred to in New York, retains other misconceptions about Gotham actors.
The young L.A. production assistant probably meant it as a compliment. She was talking with actor Julie Halston on the set of the pilot for the CBS sitcom The Class and asked her about her work on Broadway in Hairspray. The P.A. wanted to know if Broadway casts really "do the same show night after night." When Halston told her, Yes, they certainly do, the woman admitted that was something she could never imagine herself doing. "And then," Halston recalls, "she just kind of hit me on the shoulder and said, 'But good fer yewww!' And you just think, Wow, I've just been applauded and dissed at the same time. And I think that is, on a certain level, the way it's perceived, which is 'New York theatre is so hard.' "
Not that Halston believes that New York actors don't get a workout. "You do build a stamina that is, you know, breathtaking and that other actors can't hold a candle to," she says. Still, when people dismiss those Herculean efforts with a pat on the shoulder, it grates.
Halston acknowledges that actors who work consistently in Los Angeles are industrious too. The difference, she says, is that the compensation there is so much greater: "Listen, most actors are happy to make a Broadway salary, but it's peanuts in L.A. And in L.A., the idea of working so hard physically for so little money is sort of beyond them. They work, and sometimes work very long hours. But they're making so much money!"
Born in Commack, N.Y., on Long Island, Halston describes herself as "so New York it's ridiculous." In the 1980s she made a name for herself with Theatre-in-Limbo, performing in playwright-actor Charles Busch's East Village campfests, including Vampire Lesbians of Sodom and Red Scare on Sunset. Later she migrated uptown, to Broadway shows like The Women and Twentieth Century. She also has a successful career in standup comedy and has appeared in two Woody Allen films.
One of the best attributes of New York actors, Halston says, is their support of one another—something she thinks gets lost in the more competitive, geographically sprawling L.A. scene. She urges newcomers to the city to seek out like-minded souls—who may become colleagues—as well as plenty of good friends. "Not party friends," she adds. "Not people you met on MySpace, but a really good core of close, close friends."
Frank Wood, who won a Tony Award for best featured actor in a play in 1999 for Side Man, had had rewarding theatrical experiences at a Boston-area boarding school and at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, but he wanted more training. So he came to New York to get an MFA at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.
"My imagination only included New York," he says. "I was thinking I'd be in plays. And plays to me were pieces of literature. Everything I did at Wesleyan and most of what I did at NYU…was about being on stage and it was about interpreting a text. I don't know if it's a 'New York actor' thing or a 'stage actor' thing to be a part of a text that you bring to life and that you realize. [That] is not how I feel about on-camera work, for the most part."
Through his NYU connections, Wood was able to find work with a company in Malvern, Pa., where he earned his Equity card. When he returned to New York, he was introduced to new theatrical disciplines through programs such as Richard Schechner's East Coast Artists and the Actors Lab at the now-defunct Circle Repertory Company.
Wood claims to be "literally attached to the physical aspects of Manhattan." He likes that he can be with friends—via subway—in a matter of minutes. While in Side Man, he grew to enjoy after-show drinks with the cast at places like Joe Allen and Cafe Un Deux Trois. It was a social outlet he had never before explored seriously.
"It's not like that only happens in New York," he says. "But one of the expressions people have in New York is to be 'on campus,' which means that you tend to run into other actors and other people in the theatre fairly easily. And it feels like you've got an extended network of friends that are always looking out for you. That may be an illusion, but it's one that I like."
Harriet Harris often gets pegged as a New York actor—in part because she, like Wood, trained in the city (at Juilliard in her case) and spent considerable time here early in her career. But Harris, who was born in Fort Worth, Texas, defines herself simply as an actor. A "New York actor," she says, is "somebody that doesn't leave New York."
Harris left Manhattan for California in the early 1990s, initially with Paul Rudnick's Jeffrey, a New York stage hit. She began to get work in television and eventually decided to give up her New York apartment. "I really didn't like my apartment here," she says with a laugh, "but I knew I would have a very hard time getting back into Manhattan if I let it go. But it would have been such a bad idea to leave California at that point. I was on a series, and there wasn't really that much of a choice."
She returns to work on the New York stage periodically, and her familiarity to TV audiences from outings such as Frasier and Desperate Housewives makes her a draw. She won a Tony for best featured actress in 2002 for her work in the musical Thoroughly Modern Millie, and she's in town this summer for Roundabout Theatre Company's Broadway revival of Old Acquaintance.
Unlike Wood, Harris has not found the post-show social hours conducive to her life's rhythms. She is an inveterate morning person, which makes her well-suited for life in L.A. and its early calls. When she works in plays, she says, it goes against her grain to have to conserve energy for the nightly performance. She would much prefer to be at home and in bed by 11.
When Harris was at Juilliard, the school offered no classes in acting for the camera, but she says a solid foundation in New York theatre can prepare you for that. But it doesn't always work in reverse, she adds. If a New York actor goes to L.A. and things don't work out, "you'll still know how to act," she says. "But if you start out in film, unless you're successful, you really won't get to transition to theatre."
No matter where one chooses to live, the idea that an actor will be able to stay on one coast and have long-term steady work is probably naive. Francis Jue—Harris' former castmate in Thoroughly Modern Millie—uses New York as his home base but is just as apt to be working onstage in other cities around the country. In July he followed a small New York production of William Finn's Falsettoland (staged by the National Asian American Theater Festival at the Vineyard Theatre) with a stint in the title role in Peter Pan for the Muny in St. Louis.
"I've really enjoyed flexing all sorts of different muscles all over the place," Jue says, noting that he took out-of-town assignments to play the Emcee in Cabaret and Mozart in Amadeus—characters he might never have had a crack at in New York. Each city, including New York, has its own "house style" of acting dictated by the city's particular outlook and concerns, he explains; the challenge of performing in the intimate Vineyard is very different from the task of flying through the air in the 11,000-seat Muny.
"Around the country," Jue says, "as much as people mourn the demise of the American theatre, there's a good deal of respect among theatre patrons for Broadway and for New York theatre." In fact, regional-theatre marketing departments sometimes bill him as "Broadway's Francis Jue" to attract customers.
Jue describes his career journey as "haphazard." In the early 1980s, he was studying English literature at Yale and acting in plays on the side when he was invited to New York to take part in the workshop and subsequent Off-Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman's Pacific Overtures. When that job ended, he left New York to finish school, then returned to his home in the Bay Area to take a job with the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. But New York theatre had not forgotten him, and he was soon hired as an understudy in Broadway's M. Butterfly.
Largely self-trained, Jue has taken very few formal acting classes, though he takes the work very seriously. With age, he says, he has become more discriminating about the jobs he chooses—a practice often associated with the quintessential craft-focused New York actor. "Even when I'm poor, I have to think long and hard about why I'm doing something," he says. "If it's something that I can't get my head around or something that I don't understand, I won't do it. Because life's too short to make myself miserable."
When a New York actor does make the move to another city, chances are it will be Los Angeles. Certainly, part of L.A.'s allure is the chance to work more consistently in the lucrative worlds of film and television. Though on-camera jobs have increased in New York in recent years, the total is still piddling compared to L.A.
Sonora Chase has only been in California for a few weeks, but she is amazed by the amount of work available—in theatre, film, television, commercials, and industrials. Her first week in town, she received two job offers: a nonunion commercial and a short film. They conflicted, so she chose the film. "I didn't ever have that problem in New York," she says. She also had a successful audition with the theatre group Company of Angels. At L.A. auditions, she says, people are "sucked in by the New York credits."
Brooke Tansley, who had a successful career in New York for several years—including significant roles in Broadway's Beauty and the Beast and Hairspray—moved to Southern California in early July, but she sees the move more as "an investment in a long-term New York career." Eventually she wants to return to Broadway, but with a fresh perspective. Tansley doesn't know whether her New York stage credits will make a difference with L.A. casting directors and other industry insiders, but, she says, "I know it makes a difference for me. I know I'm coming here very confident."
Not quite packed and ready for the plane to LAX is John Grady, who grew up in California and trained at U.C. Irvine. His last stab at an L.A. career proved disastrous: In one week, he was dropped by his agency, his storage unit was broken into, and he learned that the used car he'd bought had suffered an engine fire and was about to conk out. A long-term engagement with Blue Man Group sent him to New York in the late '90s. He feels more confident about moving to L.A. this time, in part because he has earned solid film and TV credits in New York, including a guest spot on Sex and the City opposite Cynthia Nixon.
Still, California living makes him a bit apprehensive: "In New York we're out here rubbing elbows with people, as opposed to Los Angeles, where you rub car doors. I think it's harder to find those little communities of things that are going on. I have a friend who was going to some of those 'meet a casting director'–type classes, and they were held in a parking space in a parking garage."
Henderson, the New York casting director, cautions that the move west is not a guaranteed career boost: "I see many actors go out there and not work again, or do very little work."
But Dawson, the L.A. casting director, is more sanguine: "What's shocking to me is that…10 or 20 years ago, New York actors would come out and they'd be like, 'Oh, this whole L.A. thing—I don't know….' They were not sure if they liked it. It seems like everybody I talk to anymore who comes out from New York, their friends have told them, 'You're not gonna like L.A….' And they're like, 'We like L.A.!' "
Even for New York acting stalwarts, the thought of moving to L.A. or another city occasionally speaks to them. "A lot of the time I've felt, How much longer am I really going to be here?" Wood says. "I don't know if the city is responsible for that or just me."
Halston had a development deal with CBS in the '90s and prepared herself for California life, but when the pilot wasn't picked up, she returned home. Even during the run of The Class last season on CBS, she didn't relocate to L.A. permanently. If she landed a role on a long-term California-based series, however, she would consider getting a home there. "What's wrong with being bicoastal?" she asks.
Would Jue ever consider leaving New York? It's a question he asks himself perennially. "Some of the best actors I know live outside of New York and have real lives and real jobs where they have security and they raise families and see friends consistently," he says. And the odds of seeing—or performing in—theatre that is fresh, heartfelt, and 'boundary-breaking' are just as good in other cities as they are in New York, he says.
And yet he stays—in part because friends and family are nearby. But also because if producers in another theatre market want him, they know exactly where to find him.