SACRAMENTO — "Everybody was saying, 'You have to move to L.A.,'" recalls actor Elisabeth Nunziato, who went from being a self-described "total obscurity" to a big screen up-and-comer when she appeared as Forest Whitaker's Portuguese love interest in the 1995 John Travolta film Phenomenon, partly cast with local actors from Sacramento. But Nunziato had already made several halfhearted attempts to live in L.A. for more than a decade, always keeping her Sacramento address. Eventually, she settled in Sacramento permanently.
"I had other things going on," says Nunziato, who was born in New York, grew up in L.A., and moved to Northern California as a teen. "My life was very full — I was working professionally all the time. I quit my day job when I was 20. Between voiceovers, theatre, and this and that, by the time that film rolled around, I was pretty darn happy."
Nunziato isn't the only performer who has chosen — successfully — to become Sacramento-based. Thanks to the area's increasing number of Equity stages (currently six and counting), its proximity to Bay Area and Southland theatres and soundstages, and high-tech advances in Internet-transmittable digital photography and audio recording, more actors are making a living in Sacramento while enjoying a balanced quality of life.
It is not a choice that is made easily, however, Nunziato adds. "My mother, brother and sister are here — this is my home, [but] if you stay down in Los Angeles, then you're courting opportunity. The issue was this: leave opportunity, or go somewhere else to court [a different] opportunity. The choice is to spend time by the phone, where you may possibly get an opportunity to act, or to stay in a community where you can do good work and have relationships with people you're already working with that are rewarding." She chose the latter.
So did actor Janis Stevens, who went to high school in Sacramento before studying theatre at the University of the Pacific, then at Ohio University, then at San Diego's Old Globe. She then spent a decade performing in Vienna, Austria, before returning to California where, after eight years of successful freelancing, she settled in Sacramento in 2000.
"My mother's right here," Stevens explains. "And it really doesn't matter where I live these days because it's all transient. It's not repertory anymore. Sacramento's got a nice quality of life and it's a lot less expensive than the Bay Area. It's centrality makes it easy to get in and out of — there are great deals cross-country, like the red-eye flights on Jet Blue I took for the Drama Desk Awards in New York." (Stevens received a 2006 nomination for Outstanding Solo Show for Vivien, about Vivien Leigh.) "It's easier to drive into the Bay Area from here than from the East Bay. You burn as much gas driving from the East Bay and sitting in traffic than if you drive in from Sacramento."
Like Stevens, Jamie Jones attended high school in the south Sacramento county community of Elk Grove, graduated from a local college (California State University, Sacramento) and acted professionally before pursuing an advanced degree (San Francisco's American Conservatory Theatre). And then, Jones says, she answered what she calls the "siren's call" of the actor, packing up and making the leap to New York, joined by her husband, Michael Stevenson, who she met and married while at studying ACT. In New York, Stevenson found success doing commercials, but Jones found herself increasingly working out of town, including roles at the B Street Theatre — back in Sacramento.
"Not a lot of stuff was happening," she says of her luck in New York, adding that the city that never sleeps ultimately got on her nerves. "I kind of fell out of love with it. There were great moments, but I was tired of all the things required to live there." So, after seven years of giving Gotham a go, the duo was ready to return to California in 2003, but where to go? Almost on cue, B Street Theatre Producing Director Buck Busfield made their decision easier — he cast both Jones and Stevenson in various productions. "Buck's always been great, providing a place — a home — for us," says Jones, who went on, with Stevenson to co-found B Street's acting conservatory.
But perhaps Stephanie Gularte, artistic director of Sacramento's Capital Stage, is the ultimate example of an actor who diversifies in order to remain and work in Sacramento.
"Staying here," Gularte says, "has opened up a whole other avenue — as a producer, resulting in the first new Equity theatre in almost 15 years in Sacramento" as she raises her 12-year-old daughter, Morgan. "I'm absolutely passionate about acting and theatre, but I'm not someone who can make that a priority above what's going on at home.... Balance is the most important thing. I want to live somewhere where I can live my life and have a career." And she does, she says, happily and without regrets.
"I would have said we never planned to end up here," concludes Stevenson. "Every professional hopes to go a major urban center to train and put their toe in the water. But I have many friends who have found a home outside of the urban area. It's a funny career — you're never sure where you're going to end up."