"Running from audition to audition just wasn't giving me any kind of payback," recalls 35-year-old Mary Powers-Riddle. "After 10 years--and I worked fairly steadily in regional theatre, summer stock, and on cruises--I wanted to take the power back. I was tired of being dependent on someone else's opinion."
Nonetheless, it was difficult to quit theatre, she continues. Not that she has regrets. This May, Powers-Riddle will be completing her doctorate in clinical psychology and she insists she has made the right choice.
Like Powers-Riddle, many theatre artists move on to other careers yearly. And what's so surprising about it? Close to 85% of actors--and we're talking SAG, AFTRA, Equity union members--don't work at all in any given year; and more than 70% of those who do work don't earn enough to get health insurance provided by one of their unions, meaning they are earning (as actors) under $7,500. So asserts Kathy Schrier, managing director of the Actors' Work Program at the Actors' Fund of America. The Actors' Work Program, now in its 17th year, helps theatre artists (and not just actors) develop skills so that they can forge new careers.
"The reality is that most people in the industry need another job to survive," says Schrier. "We try to help the theatre artist stay in the business. The training and aid--financial as well as emotional--that we provide may lead to a sideline career or a parallel career to theatre. But sometimes the new career is a transition out of the business altogether."
We talked to half a dozen theatre artists, ranging in age from 35 to 65, who have either left the entertainment industry completely or are diversifying--launching secondary careers. What was striking is how straightforward and candid they were about their decisions, conflicts, and goals.
Not Getting to the Next Level
Not unexpectedly, their experiences vary, but they concur on one salient point: Abandoning theatre--or even just switching gears, e.g., establishing another career to supplement the acting--is an ambivalent, perhaps even a painful move, awash in reassessment and soul-searching. The emotional investment in a theatre career is probably unprecedented, not least because of the time and money spent and the personal sacrifices that many artists have made in order to pursue their elusive dream.
And a fair number of former theatre artists (or theatre artists in transition) whom we interviewed were, like Powers-Riddle, regularly employed. Yet, for whatever reasons, they were unable to move to the next level in their careers and decided the time had come to try their hand at something else.
"As a stand-up comic and freelance comedy writer--for such programs as the 'The David Letterman Show'--I was getting by," says 40-year-old Ron Gallop. "Occasionally, I even had a relatively good year. But I can't say that at any point I was making a good living. I was 38 years old and I didn't have a savings account. And, more serious, I was still hustling for assignments. After 15 years, I didn't think that was going to change."
Two years ago, Gallop gave up his artistic pursuits cold turkey and is today, he says, happily employed at the investment firm of Goldman Sachs, supervising those who create and edit interoffice documents.
Roger Kozol, who for 15 years played lead roles in major regional theatres (like the Guthrie, Arena Studio, and the Cincinnati Playhouse), explains that he too left the business (30 years ago) because he had not taken the next step up and saw no evidence that it was in the offing.
"I was no longer a juvenile lead," he remembers. "And I was not old enough to play character parts. Suddenly, I was being offered roles that I really didn't like, and I wasn't making a living at it, either. At that stage--after playing the young leads in regional theatres--many actors conclude that the only way they're going to move on is to develop their own projects, have their own production companies. And that takes a lot of money that I didn't have!"
Kozol admits he was experiencing other dissatisfactions as well?like the growing power of the casting director who, from his (Kozol's) point of view, had become a serious obstacle. "Before the '70s, you could get to the director or producer directly, if you knew them," recalls Kozol. "That changed when the casting director, who had been hired as a buffer, started making the initial decisions. You had to go through him [or her] first."
And, looking back, Kozol realizes that he was more interested in making some real money--lifestyle issues had taken precedence over anything else--than battling, or attempting to circumvent, casting directors.
His first step toward financial solvency was running a home-operated nutritional supplement business, and later he moved into the heady world of cyberspace. Currently, Kozol teaches corporations how to create websites and best utilize the Internet.
What the Hell Is Success?
Clearly, concepts of what "the next step" means--not to mention how one defines success--are individual.