Expert: J. Spyder Isaacson - 11/8/2007

Question
I recently realized that I love performing live on stage and I would love to be a Broadway performer as a job.  However, I do know that they don't pay that well and therefor I would probably need another job to make ends meet.  I was wondering if it would be possible for me to have a professional day job as well as do Broadway.  I also wanted to know what the typical rehearsal schedule was for a Broadway performer.  Thank you for your time and please get back to me when you can.  I really appreciate your help.

Lexie Muffet

Answer
Join the club.  There are a dozen dozen of us in the Seattle (second-biggest theatre city in the nation, BTW) who would LOVE to be earning a living doing what we love doing . . . and doing it on Broadway is second best to heaven!  Sadly, only about 10% of us actually manage to do it, and most of us don't do it without also either (a) having a second income, or (b) having an agent to give them commercial, model or other similar work.

To give you an idea, I'm living through a combination of student loans (I'm purusing my master's so that I can teach theatre at the college level) and doing temp work.  The pros I've worked with have confirmed that, until you've cracked the Equity ranks, you *HAVE* to have something else to pay the bills.

What this ultimately means is that you should have a secondary profession until you can make acting pay (even if, as in my case, it's "profesional student").  I had the advantage of having a previous career (in IT) before I realized that what I was supposed to be doing was acting.

Soooooo . . . if this means you have to take another love (in my case, computers) and use it to firmly establish another career . . . so be it.  In the immortal words (in a lecture series I was fortunate to attend) of writer Kurt Vonegut, "As far as money -- get it.  Marrying into it is a possibility."

Mind you, to use another Kurt Vonnegut quote (from the same lecture), "People ask me 'how do I know if I am a writer?'  My answer is simple -- you know that you are a writer if, for you, to not write is to die."  The same is true of being an actor.  If you can't stop acting, then don't.  It's a rare gift we share, and it's not worth dying for to ignore.  If you can share it with the world, then do everything you can to do so, even if it takes you a lifetime! (Remember: Helen Hayes and Wilford Brimley didn't hit hit big until their later years!  And Michael J. Fox took a far shorter time to Make It Big(TM)!  You just can't tell!)

Let me know if (and how) this helps!

-- Spyder