They come from as far away as Israel and as close as Rochester, N.Y. Every year, thousands pour into New York City ready to chase their dream of earning a living as an actor. But you'll need more than talent, luck, and nerve to make it in Gotham. How about landing an apartment? Learning the subway system? Or finding a good exterminator?
This year, our annual Welcome to New York spotlight turns the high beams on a quintet of actors whose experiences range from recently graduating from college to starting a performing career after years in the business world to immigrating to America following an international sojourn across four continents. They share their stories of struggling to find their way in the metropolis and offer advice on everything from "couch surfing" to temp jobs. We'll be following up on their careers with regular updates, so be sure to watch Back Stage for more news on these newcomers. Plus, we've got a utility belt for all you actor-superheroes and 10 steps to jump-start your career.
Joshua Huff Keeps on Point
By Simi Horwitz
Joshua Huff always had his sights set on moving to New York to launch his musical theatre career. But he also knew it would be pricey, and he didn't want to arrive short on cash. So, following his graduation in 2002 from Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music, where he majored in voice and music education, he took a year off to teach and save money for the relocation. "I wanted to come to New York and spend my time making money at what I love-singing, acting, and dancing," he says.
Huff had to take a job to support himself once he got here, but arriving with cash in hand-and a sublet awaiting him-boosted his confidence: "I got to New York on a Thursday night at midnight, and on Friday morning I hit the ground running and went to my first open-call audition." Clearly, Huff is a believer in preparation, as well as the value of maintaining a network of college friends, who "became my family in New York," he says. "I got my sublet from a friend, my ride to New York from a friend, and even my first job as a cater-waiter from a friend who was doing that."
The job was ideal because there was plenty of time to audition. And since so many of the cater-waiters were fellow actors-pounding the pavement during the day and serving at parties at night-Huff enjoyed the camaraderie and the opportunity to learn about what other actors were up to and the opportunities that existed.
Making Sure He's Seen
With Back Stage in hand, Huff went to virtually every nonunion audition he thought he might conceivably be right for, suspecting it was worthwhile to be seen by casting directors whether or not he landed a role. His thinking was on target. Three months after moving to New York, he auditioned for a tour of Rent. "The casting director said I wasn't right for that," Huff says, "but I was right for another regional show she was working on: Jason Robert Brown's Songs for a New World. I got the part and was with the show in Idaho for six weeks. Two weeks after I came back to New York, I was out on tour with The Adventures of Lewis & Clark, and then went to summer stock at the Mountain Playhouse in Jennerstown, Pa., where I performed in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and Prelude to a Kiss. The Mountain Playhouse had an Equity membership program, and I had begun accumulating points towards membership. I finally became an Equity member last summer."
But in the fall of 2004, auditioning for Equity shows was not yet an option. There were other fish to fry, however, including a stint with Of Thee I Sing at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, N.J. That Christmas, Huff gave up his job as a cater-waiter to work as a piano dancer-literally dancing on a piano-at FAO Schwarz. "I worked two days a week for a year. It was a great job," he says. "It kept me in shape, the hours were flexible, and since all the piano dancers were actors, we could all substitute for each other when one of us had to go to an audition. And the management was very supportive."
During that time, Huff managed to get a one-week gig with the Little Orchestra Society, "performing [as] Buzz the Bee in the Lollipop series for children." The next summer he was back at the Mountain Playhouse, building up his Equity membership points in Crazy for You.
Shortly thereafter, Huff got a call from Jean Ann Ryan Productions, a company that arranges shows on cruise ships, asking him if he was interested in performing onboard. "I had auditioned for them a year earlier, and they had previously made me several offers," he says. "But the timing hadn't been right. It meant leaving the city for six months, and I wasn't ready to do that. Now I felt I was." Huff gave up his apartment and became the lead male singer in three musical revues on the ship Norwegian Dream, leaving Houston for one-week cruises in the Caribbean.
Huff was back in New York in April of 2006 when another friend's sublet surfaced, and so did a role in Beauty and the Beast at Mill Mountain Theatre in Roanoke, Va., followed by a part in the chorus of The King and I at the Mountain Playhouse. "At this point I got my Equity card," he says.
A Renewed Focus on Learning
Huff knows he was fortunate in working as much as he did, admitting that as a result he did not have time to study formally (short of a few dance classes) or attend as many workshops and readings as he might have liked. After earning his Equity card, however, he felt, "I had to step up my game a bit. I realized I was now going to be competing with actors who were at the top of their craft. I had a renewed interest in learning, focusing on progressing as an actor. So instead of auditioning for various shows, I took a job as a receptionist at an advertising agency and became a part-time nanny in order to stay in New York and take classes."
So far he has enrolled in an eight-week television class that meets once a week and focuses on the acting techniques for soap operas, commercials, and TV dramas and comedies. "The teacher is Dani Super, and I found her on Playbill.com," he says. "In the future I'm planning to take monologue and scene study classes."
Huff also wants new headshots, and he's shopping for photographers more discriminatingly than when he came to New York. "I got my first photographer through the recommendation of friends," he says. "I'll continue to talk to friends but come up with a number of photographers with whom I'll meet. I'll have to be comfortable with anyone I choose. But most important, I want my photos to show a versatile actor who might be considered a dramatic leading man or a comic supporting actor in film, television, and theatre. I also want the pictures to be in color. I'd like to start pursuing agents, something I haven't done yet."
Huff has changed since he arrived in New York. Despite his ambitions, he is no longer interested in taking just any job that comes down the pike. "I want to be involved in good work," he says. "I've redefined my goals. That may mean being on Broadway. But it may mean doing real well in regional theatre. I also know the field is unpredictable and hard. I may or may not make it. I've grown up."
Emily Kinney Makes Eye Contact
By David Sheward
"New York is a lot different from Nebraska," laughs 22-year-old Emily Kinney, recalling her early days in the big city as a student at NYU for a semester. "It was my first day going to class, and we had to wait in line to get into the elevator at the dorm where I was staying. I remember thinking how odd that was. And then we packed into the elevator, just the amount of people, and no one holds a door for you, and no one says hi to you. In Nebraska, that's an automatic thing. They'll make eye contact with you there. If a person makes eye contact with you here, you should be scared." She giggles and adds that this is a generalization not true of all New Yorkers. But, she says, the atmosphere here is definitely more challenging than in Lincoln, capital of the Cornhusker State, where she grew up and where-apart from her one semester at NYU-she attended Nebraska Wesleyan University.
A Midwesterner in Manhattan
The recent college grad is adjusting to the radical change of scene. Kinney moved here in May 2006, has already appeared in Manhattan Repertory Theatre's October festival of one-acts, and will be shooting an independent horror film called Aunt Tigress the last weekend in January. She counts her time at NYU as invaluable in making the transition from Midwestern college student to ambitious New York performer. "I got to study with all the juniors that were in the program at Playwrights Horizons," she explains, "so I got to get that kind of conservatory training even though I wasn't part of the program. That was the first time I had ever been to New York. While I was here, I started to go on some open calls, and got in a show-an outdoor production of A Midsummer Night's Dream in New Canaan, Conn.-during the summer. I stayed for a while after that, and moved back to Nebraska to finish my college degree at Wesleyan."
During that first foray in the Big Apple, Kinney learned how to get along here and made the decision to return to pursue an acting career. In addition to having to wait in line for the elevator, she initially found the subway daunting: "I lived on Water Street, down in the financial district, in some apartments NYU had established for us," she recalls, "so we had to take the subway for classes. I [would get] out of the subway and [feel] like I didn't know which way was north and which way was south. It was almost like a whole other town; you feel like you're in a whole other place. I remember just being really scared, actually, to leave my apartment, because I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to get back without having to pay for a cab. I remember the first couple of days being in my apartment and calling my mom because I didn't know anybody. It was scary." But she gradually overcame her fears, even attending open calls she read about in Back Stage. The first one was for a production of Michael John LaChiusa's The Wild Party. She wasn't cast, but "I was called back. That was really exciting and motivating. Then I went to a couple more and got A Midsummer Night's Dream.
"From going on the open calls, I learned that you have to show up early, and just the basic things-like having your headshot and résumés ready. I hadn't done any of that stuff before. My first headshot was one that I'd had someone at Wesleyan, back when I was in Nebraska, do for practice. I had one of those and I actually went to Kinko's and Xeroxed it. I took that one to my Midsummer audition. It wasn't good at all.
"I also learned that you focus on the work," she continues. "I didn't have the greatest headshot or résumé at that point, because I didn't know what I was doing, but I did have a good monologue. And I learned from the other people auditioning. I remember seeing this other girl's résumé, and it looked really, really good. It had a little picture on the résumé side, and the credits were neatly typed. I remember looking at hers while I was waiting to be called in and thinking, 'That looks really nice.' "
Acquiring Survival Skills
One course she took as part of her drama degree at Wesleyan was also extremely useful: "I did have a class called Professional Prep back in Nebraska. You had to choose a city-it could be Seattle, any city-and you made a binder all about that place. You made lists of places to live, every person you knew in that city, where to get groceries, how to get a job, anything you would need. I didn't pick New York; I picked Washington, D.C. This was before I came to New York. This was not even auditioning-it was just the basic things, like where's the post office? Where's the grocery store? How much is the rent in these different neighborhoods? What side jobs can you do? What are you good at besides acting? Where are you going to get your headshots taken? We had all these different sections to fill out."
These survival skills came in handy when Kinney returned to New York after graduation, and so did the friendships she had formed at NYU. "That's how I met Kelly, my first roommate," she says. "We had done this little extra book-study thing. She wasn't an actress; she was a journalism major. I roomed with her during the semester, and then I had to find a place during the summer while I did Midsummer. I was in a studio with two other girls. It was crazy, but it was also really fun. It was tiny. The kitchen wasn't even as big as one of the dorm refrigerators. We had a bed and a futon. Where you walked in, there was an area where we put tons of shelves for all of our clothes. But we were all doing what we wanted to do. We were all really busy. Kelly had classes and she was doing internships. It was kind of like being in college, where you're all stuck in a dorm, so we were able to do it. It pushed you to go out and do things."
During her last year in college, Kinney worked on adding to her marketable skills, such as dialects, and increasing her vocal range. "I'm a belter," she says, "and I wanted to work on getting that more legit, more operatic sound." When she returned to New York last summer, she "couch surfed" for about a month before finding an apartment in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. She recommends a website called Couchsurfing.com for temporary accommodations and Craigslist.org for a more permanent abode. When not auditioning or performing, she works at a café called Gimme! Coffee a few blocks from her home.
Kinney is presently nonunion, but joining the unions is definitely a goal for her: "I just did a show at Manhattan Rep and it was nonunion, but it was very good experience for me. I got another job through it: A guy who had seen the show called me and said, 'Hey, do you want to do this reading? I think this is a good part for you.' So I'm willing to do nonunion stuff most of the time. But I am pushing myself more to go to those Equity calls, because I do feel this is not just for fun; this is my job. I want to get paid fairly for it."
Bruce Sabath Becomes a'Company' Man
By Andrew Salomon
At age 35, Bruce Sabath was the director of strategic planning for American Express, working at heights few people reach. But he was gasping for air, one of Thoreau's men of quiet desperation. "The thing I was doing wasn't the thing I wanted to be doing," Sabath says. "I figured the next thing would be the right thing. Each time I would make the move, I would think, 'This one is going to be it. This is going to be the one where I'll really love it.' Then I would get there, and it wasn't."
One day his wife told him to snap out of it. He did. Nearly 10 years later, Sabath is working on Broadway, playing Larry (and the clarinet) in John Doyle's revival of Stephen Sondheim's Company.
He has undertaken a difficult task, beginning an acting career at an age that's at least a full decade beyond the usual starting point. But Sabath, now 44, has used his business acumen to form a plan, one that has carried him along a path familiar to many actors: a nonunion tour, independent films, a voiceover job that got him his first union card-which got him his Equity card, leading to regional theatre work and now a job on Broadway.
"You should do what makes you happy," he says. "Sometimes it's hard to figure out what that is."
Brighton Memoirs
Sabath grew up in Brighton, N.Y., a suburb of Rochester, where, he says, "I literally knew no one who had an out-of-the-ordinary job." His father worked for 37 years at Kodak and his mother worked at home. Kodak and Xerox were the major employers in town, and that's where all the grownups Sabath knew worked, unless they were doctors or lawyers.
As a child he sang, acted, and played his clarinet. When he went to Harvard, he majored in applied mathematics, though he sang in an a cappella group and acted in the occasional play. After going to the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, Sabath moved to New York to work in business.
By May of 1997, Sabath had married his wife, Karen, and they had a 3-year-old boy, Jeremy. In addition, he had a 60-hour workweek, a chronic back problem, and this nagging idea there was something better out there. His wife had roughly the same schedule and responsibilities, along with this annoying buzz in her ear. "I'm so sick and tired of you bitching and moaning about hating your job," Sabath says Karen told him when it got to be too much. "If you could, just for a second, think about what it is you would want to do all day if you could choose what you wanted to do. Don't think about the logistics or the money or all the other constraints." Sabath didn't know the question was coming, but when it did, he had a ready answer: "Well, I would act."
They debated the pros and cons. Sabath took the con, telling his wife, "It's not practical": The work was unsteady, and when it did come, it would involve odd hours and travel. Karen said, "But if you know so clearly that's what you want to do, then how can you not give it a shot?" She won the argument.
Sabath sent an email to hundreds of his colleagues and co-workers informing them of his decision. They were the people he had wanted to emulate, because they were always excited about their jobs and liked what they did. The responses were nearly unanimous and, Sabath says, many ran along these lines: "If only I knew so clearly what I wanted to do with my life. I know it's not this, but I'm stuck here."
"People were pretty encouraging," he says. "Very few people said I was crazy." He began studying with acting teacher William Esper, who introduced him to the Actors Movement Studio. Sabath dropped 15 pounds, the back problems went away, and, most important, he says, "They taught me to breathe."
In Good Company
From his first play as a professional at the American Museum of Natural History to getting cast as Ira in Donald Margulies' Brooklyn Boy at the Florida Studio Theatre in Sarasota, Sabath progressed steadily. Along the way he auditioned for Susan Stroman, as well as for Tony Kushner and George C. Wolfe (for Caroline, or Change).
He also got to audition for John Doyle's Broadway revival of Sweeney Todd, but didn't get the part because Doyle and the rest of the creative team knew the character he was auditioning for wouldn't play the clarinet. Then came the auditions for Company. He went in, played, sang, then chatted a bit with Doyle, who told him, "Thank you." Sabath left, not quite knowing what to make of it. Then he got a callback, and the process was more or less the same. By this point, late November of 2005, Sabath was getting ready to go to Sarasota to begin rehearsals. He got another call and was told, "Everyone loves you, but we want you to come back for a third audition, for Mr. Sondheim." Sabath was faced with having to walk away from a sure thing in Brooklyn Boy for the chance to be in Company -- which at that point had no guarantee of moving to Broadway after its run at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park.
"I thought, 'I'm going to lose this,' " says Sabath, who was trying to come up with ways to make it work. Perhaps fly in on a Monday (a day off), audition, then fly right back? But it didn't matter when he received one more phone call: There was no need to audition again; he had the part.
After Brooklyn Boy closed, Sabath flew to Cincinnati to begin rehearsals. The first day, Doyle had the actors on their feet, acting, singing, playing their instruments, and kicking their scripts along the floor. "It wasn't intimidating," Sabath says, "but it was frightening. None of us knew what we were doing."
Simply Grateful
Sabath doesn't fail to note the irony that his first big break comes as a husband in a troubled marriage in a landmark musical about love, relationships, and myriad crises of commitment. By contrast, with his wife encouraging him to pursue what he really wants, their marriage has flourished.
"Nothing's ever perfect," Sabath says. "The pressure is so much on my wife to keep everything going at home while I'm doing a run or traveling." Nevertheless, his move inspired Karen to leave her own high-pressured job and spend more time with their two sons. (Michael was born in 1998.)
Sabath also says he believes that in switching careers, he is setting a good example for his children. "You should do what you feel is right for you in terms of your job," he says. "Think outside the doctor/lawyer/Indian chief mold, which I had certainly fallen into."
Sabath describes Company's opening-night party at Copacabana as every actor's daydream. He arrived with Karen; they walked past the gauntlet of media and camera flashes and stopped briefly to pose for pictures in front of a photographer's backdrop, which came with a corporate logo: Fidelity. Later, as the reviews were coming in, Karen was on the phone to her brother, who read her the one from The New York Times: "Bruce Sabath... is touching and credible as Joanne's patient husband."
Perhaps he is just returning the favor.
Orion Talmay Learns to Love Acting
By Anna Bengel
Orion Talmay can't really remember her first acting role, but she can still remember exactly what it felt like. The 28-year-old, who grew up in Israel, is vague on the details of her character and can't come up with the name of the play, but she was only 9 the first time she took the stage. "I was playing a little child, a Russian play or something," she says slowly, shaking her head slightly. "But I'd always wanted to be up there. It's a rush. It's adrenaline. It's a place to be seen and to contribute something to other people: make them laugh, make them cry." Talmay, in her strong, silky accent, has perhaps just summed up what makes acting so intoxicating and enthralling.
Running From Her Calling
It's important, in regard to Talmay's story, to mention the old adage that actors don't choose the profession; it chooses them. From her childhood in Israel to years spent waiting tables in Tokyo, from skipping through countries in Europe, North America, and Africa to arriving in New York City two years ago with little more than a suitcase, acting has always followed her, even when she wasn't particularly looking for it. At some points in her life, in fact, she was trying to outrun it.
"I was set on traveling and examining my life," Talmay says of a period in her early 20s in the Israeli tourist town of Eilat, when she had serious acting experience behind her but was spending her days selling cars to make money. "[Selling cars] was so boring, I had to leave the country. I had to get a different idea of what I really want to do. Is acting what I want to do? Do I need to get a serious job?" With that, she set off for Japan, where during four years of working in bars and exploring countries from France to Canada to Thailand to Egypt, "the acting was nonexistent."
And yet she was satisfied. And yet she wasn't. She refers to those years as "a big celebration of life," but adds in the next breath that at the end of the day, she was restless. How does an actor stop acting? The profession just wouldn't let her go, no matter how many twists and turns she took exploring other things. Talmay was born in Tel Aviv, Israel's second-largest city, located in the most populous urban area, a "happening city," she says, "a culture capital, very lively, very much fun" -- a city not unlike New York. But the idea of moving to New York didn't occur to Talmay in childhood or even young adulthood; she hadn't yet tapped into the idea of the American dream, or, at least, the come-to-America-and-make-it-big acting dream. She wouldn't be able to comprehend striking out until she was sure why she was acting.
"The big dream, the American dream, the Big Apple, the big, big, big" is how Talmay describes it in a breathless voice, spreading her arms wide and stretching her fingers, her right middle one adorned with a huge silver ring shaped like the head of a horse, her nails sporting chipped fuchsia polish. She widens her eyes, rimmed with bright green shadow: "I like the world. I like big things. I want to do, to go and do big plays, big movies. I want to try; maybe I'll make it. I need to embrace my stupid accent; I need to embrace myself. It's a matter of who you are."
Acknowledging her insecurities hasn't been easy for Talmay, says Chris Duncan, an actor friend who met her in a class at the Neighborhood Playhouse shortly after her arrival in New York: "Because of her background, maybe her English isn't so strong, but that makes her determined. She has to work harder."
Talmay has spent many years working to discover who she is as an actor. During her compulsory two years of military service in the Israeli army, she decided to treat her fellow soldiers to some theatrical entertainment and wrote a comic play, in the vein of Saturday Night Live and complete with sketch commercials, that twisted the Christmas story to the modern era. "There was no pressure," she recalls. "I just wanted to make people laugh. And we were successful." Upon her discharge, she joined the Debra Miller Theatre Group and bolstered her craft with exercises in psychodrama, improvisation, dance, and Greek theatre. "Acting just became more and more appealing," she says.
It appealed to her all the way to Eilat, a hot, dry city on the eastern side of the Red Sea that draws tourists for its hotels, nightlife, sun, and apparent resemblance to Greece. Talmay had won a space in a resort-based entertainment troupe. She spent 18 grueling months performing in elaborately staged costume shows, leading children in games dressed as a clown or a cowboy, and perfecting her hip-hop dancing, often working and training around the clock. And then she quit everything, started selling cars, quit that, and moved to Tokyo. The years she spent not acting ultimately brought her back to herself and to America.
A New Life in New York
"When I first came to New York, it was very cold and gray," Talmay recalls. "It was, like, March." She describes her first reaction thusly: "People say that New York is exciting-and it's not! It's cold and dark and boring. And then I realized that New York has so many layers." She quickly auditioned for and was accepted into the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre, joining a community of young and bright actors and taking on roles almost as suddenly as she had stopped wanting to act. She performed in showcases, collections of Shakespearean verse, musicals, film, and television, and she studied stage combat, ballet, voice, and speech. She graduated last May, in a more philosophical and serene place, her passion for acting renewed.
"I feel like now I am waking up and having my morning coffee as far as my acting career," she says. "When you tap into a character, you tap into things within yourself you've never explored before, things you are afraid to touch. Actors learn a lot about themselves through their characters." As Talmay's spirit for acting came back, so did her desire to learn about herself.
It was those years spent as a vagabond explorer, a perpetual outsider, that ultimately lent her strength, depth, and richness of character, Duncan explains: "She's not a shy individual, and she doesn't approach things from a superficial level."
For her part, Talmay has learned not to judge herself -- on the surface or otherwise -- against other actors. "First it's, 'Am I good enough?' And then it's, 'That's bullshit.' Is it fair that I have brown eyes? Am I as slim as someone else? No. You just stay positive. Acting is just one individual's way of expressing passion. It's harder because a lot of people come here to do the same thing. The competition is bigger, but the opportunities are bigger, too. I've been through all this; I'm not going to give up now. For now, I still live in the moment."
Julian Stetkevych Confronts Real Life
By Leonard Jacobs
"Lots of people ask, 'How do you like New York?,' like they expect 'I hate it' or 'It's the most exciting place ever,' " remarks actor Julian Stetkevych, who moved to New York City from San Francisco last June, having earned his MFA at the American Conservatory Theater. But the actor, who opens Jan. 29 in his second show since arriving-Alejandro Morales' The Silent Concerto at the 14th Street Theatre-avoids such terms.
"Since I've just come from a graduate school program, the last three years have been mapped out for me," he says. "Moving to New York has been about getting used to real life-getting a life, paying bills, figuring out when to rehearse, when to audition-daily-life things I haven't had to worry about. I had Uncle Sam sending me money, and my parents sending me a little bit more-it's the only way to do grad school, apparently. Now I have debt, bills, and rent, so that's been one of the difficulties: readjusting."
An Indianan by Way of Egypt
But let's backtrack, because for Stetkevych, adjusting to new surroundings isn't all that odd an experience. Born in Cairo, Egypt, to American professors of Arabic literature, he was raised in Bloomington, Ind. "We used to travel to the Middle East a lot, and I spent several years there in my childhood," he says. "Once I was fluent in Arabic, while now I have good taxicab Arabic." More pertinent, his parents immersed him in the arts: "We always went to ballet, opera, and the symphony. I went to the theatre in London one summer, and when I came back, I started high school and decided theatre would be my extracurricular activity." He majored in sociology at the University of Chicago, partly because the school didn't offer a theatre degree, "but we had a very active theatre group-overseen by the professors yet student-run. We chose the shows, directed, designed, and we acted."
For three years after graduation, Stetkevych remained in Chicago, accruing credits with large groups like Steppenwolf Theatre Company and Bailiwick Repertory Theatre, plus edgy theatre companies like Theo Ubique and A Reasonable Facsimile. "I wasn't positive acting was what I wanted to do," he notes. "I'm a rationalist: I knew eventually I'd go back to school, either for acting training or I'd give up and just go into advertising." Director Tina Landau, a Steppenwolf member, was apparently one reason he's not now devising slogans for aspirin bottles: "I was part of the premiere of [Charles L. Mee's] The Berlin Circle, and the great thing was, Tina was so collaborative using [her training method] Viewpoints. So though we were undergraduates then-I think I was 20-our artistic input was much the same as if we were Steppenwolf members. You got to see this was your show. And I really wanted to keep that feeling going."
So off he went to ACT. "I've never worked so hard as my years of school there," Stetkevych says. "It was so personally rewarding-the first time I could work on the thing I love. I think it made a career in the arts real for me." As at many graduate schools, there were agent showcases before graduation, plus a big decision to make: Should he move to Los Angeles or New York?
"From talking to prior graduates and to industry people ACT brought in to speak with us, I got a picture of New York as a place-while you wait to make it big, quote unquote-where there's an artistic community putting on productions: people making theatre, doing readings, auditioning. Like a spirit of 'We must make theatre,' 'We must make art,' 'We must be involved in theatre,' which isn't what I got from L.A. at all. It was like L.A. was all about waiting to make it-and a smaller community of artists interested in really working on something. Of course I want to make it, but there's got to be more to it. You've got to be delusional if you go to L.A. thinking, 'I'm going to make it.' Living in New York, you signal you're in it for the long haul."
Pursuing the Long Haul
Not only has Stetkevych found that communal sense, he's even found the process of getting settled less challenging than he feared. Here's his apartment-hunting tale: "I lived in a Crown Heights sublet with a friend from school when I first got here. Then I looked on Craigslist for potential roommates who didn't sound crazy. I also looked in actor-friendly neighborhoods like Astoria. I knew I could maybe afford to live in certain places in Manhattan, but it would also be draining financially. I think I'd feel more tied down to my day job, whereas paying less and stacking away some money would be better for me, so if a theatre opportunity came along, I could take it." So he did, in fact, find a roommate in Astoria, and his rent is $700 a month.
"Right now," Stetkevych adds, "I'm a secretary at a law firm and actually salaried, so I have benefits for the first time ever. I've been going to the doctor and dentist, getting the most out of it. I found the job through theatre contacts: A girl who'd gone to my school emailed everyone, saying, 'If you're interested in this kind of work, here's the information.' So I was at a day job, seriously, five days after getting here. Certainly I don't think I can keep it forever. It's a thing where you keep acting on the down low: You don't want to parade that 'other thing' too much. But they do let me go on lunchtime auditions, and they'll let me move my lunchtime around during the day to go on them."
For the future, Stetkevych looks forward to simply being a New Yorker. "When I have free time, it's a great city to live in. I have lots of friends-11 people from my class moved here, plus I had friends here from my undergraduate days. Some weeks I go out three times to audition; some weeks I don't audition at all. I don't have an agent, although I'd say half my graduate school class got one. Yet I think I've spent the most time acting. So there you go."