Real life a tough role for Seattle actors: Few able to make a living

A dark-haired, willowy young woman sits quietly in an ACT Theatre lobby, clutching a glossy photo of herself.

Alycia Delmore, 26, will have just five minutes to impress ACT staffers, who audition roughly 1,000 actors each year for fewer than 100 stage roles.

Years of training, including a degree in theater from Western Washington University, have led up to this tense moment.

But if this turns out to be Delmore's big break, she still faces even greater challenges in her goal to become a thriving professional actor in Seattle.

Seattle is often ranked in the top 10 U.S. cities for quality live theater, offering up everything from Shakespeare dramas to mega-musicals like "Hairspray" for the area's thousands of theater-savvy patrons.

And local actors, agents, arts educators and theater directors often say Seattle is a mecca for budding performers looking to hone their craft.

But can they make a living? That's a challenge few can meet.

Plenty of stage roles exist here, but few pay a living wage. And the film and TV jobs many good actors need to supplement their theater roles are going to other cities, especially Vancouver, B.C.

Karen J. Zeller Lane, director of Theatre Puget Sound, an alliance of theater workers and companies, stresses the Seattle competition is stiff.

About 450 local performers belong to Actors Equity Association, the national stage actors' union. At least as many nonunion actors are also trolling for work.

Roles don't last long

Area theater companies offer nearly 700 union roles and hundreds more nonunion in a year, but those roles generally last only a few weeks. It takes a lot of roles to pay the rent.

"I tell young actors, you can't be picky," Lane says. "Honestly, this is not a town to make a living acting in except for our top folks, maybe a dozen people."

Richard E.T. White graduated about three dozen aspiring actors this spring from the Theater Department he heads at Cornish College of the Arts.

The respected University of Washington Professional Actors Training Program adds 10 graduates annually to the area's thespian population.

"I consider an actor's life a mosaic," White advises grads. "You need to perform onstage, audition for film and TV commercials, teach. You need a multiplicity of skills to build a creative identity and a professional life."

Paying the rent

Delmore knows all about that. The Seattleite has taught acting to kids at Kirkland's Studio East. She auditions regularly. When times are slow, she works as a baker in a Pike Place Market eatery.

But her main goal is to regale a live audience. "I just love to be on stage, trying different things and learning," she says.

One reason actors flock here is the bounty of 100 active ensembles in the area, doing musicals, dramas, comedies, dinner mysteries — you name it.

Many are established but low-budget "fringe" outfits that pay little or nothing. (Delmore was happy to earn $75 for a few weeks' work in a Theater Schmeater show.) Roughly a dozen are professional groups paying Equity actors from $170 to $1,000 per week for a play's run.

Upstart troupes keep popping up here, forged by bands of idealistic thespians right out of college.

Like hopeful garage bands, they tend to appear in small spaces and sport offbeat names: e.g., Defibrillator Productions, Double Shot, Live Girls! and a group Delmore belongs to, The Possibilities.

"When you create your own work you stretch yourself, hone your chops," notes Myra Platt, co-director of Book-It Repertory Theatre, which scouts rising talent for its professional shows.

A bright side for union actors is the fact that prime companies such as ACT, Seattle Repertory Theatre, 5th Avenue Musical Theatre Company and Intiman Theatre are using more resident talent than ever.

According to Actors Equity, in the 2003-2004 Seattle-area theater season, local performers won 687 union stage contracts, and 196 went to out-of-town actors. That's up from 2002-2003 figures of 594 local contracts and 241 for out-of-towners.

In tight times, it's cheaper to hire here and not pay travel expenses for imported players. And such major employers as the 5th Avenue and the Seattle Children's Theatre have an outspoken commitment to hiring from the Seattle acting ranks.

Another plus: a recent boom in jobs teaching theater arts.

"The artist teaching market is huge here," says Lane. "You'll find a lot of twentysomethings and thirtysomethings earning their livelihoods that way."

Following the work

It's often when accomplished actors reach their 30s and yearn to make better money or start a family that greener pastures beckon.

Seattle, however, does offer a gentler alternative to the high-pressure, cutthroat actors' track in L.A. or New York.

A small contingent of dexterous, middle-aged stage stars who helped raise Seattle's drama profile in the 1970s and '80s still burnish it today. Laurence Ballard, Marianne Owen, R. Hamilton Wright are among the select few often seen in leads at the Rep, ACT, Intiman.

But Book-It's Platt worries about losing the generation just behind those veterans.

"Acting is hands-on learning," she said. "And if you're not getting what you need here, the Cool Whip commercial that pays well or that great part in a play, it's tough to stay as you get better and better. I've seen a lot of good people leave."

Allison Narver, who heads the Empty Space Theatre in Fremont, says there are too few midsized, professional companies like her own to "bridge the gap between the fringe and the larger theaters. We can help give emerging actors a place to grow, a ton of support and help them fill the shoes of the previous generation.

"But in this arts economy, it's harder for us to keep going and offering those opportunities."

There exists a centuries-long, fabled tradition of actors as gypsies who follow the work wherever it leads. In a profession where nationwide unemployment can top 90 percent at any given time, it's no wonder.

Numerous actors who learned their craft in Seattle theaters have found success in bigger ponds.

They include Jillian Armenante (who's on TV's "Judging Amy"), Christopher Evan Welch (an Off-Broadway regular), Jane Adams (recently in the film "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"), and such noted UW alums as Kyle MacLachlan ("Twin Peaks") and Jean Smart ("Designing Women").

A lack of "Exposure"

One frustration that chases actors away: a paucity of well-paid feature-film and TV work.

At flush times during the 1990s, points out acting agent Jamie Lopez, "we had a very active film-production industry happening in Washington, with TV series like 'Northern Exposure' being shot here and providing a lot of income for stage actors."

Lately, much of that cash has flown north to British Columbia, where Canadian stage actors work alongside Hollywood stars.

"You get the same Northwest aesthetics up there but at lower production costs," says Lopez.

The Canadian drain and the national recession hit the state's film industry hard.

According to the Washington State Film Office, film-production spending in Washington totaled $27.5 million in 1996.

In 2003, the figure dropped to $16.5 million.

"We had a good year in 2000 when the [TV series] 'The Fugitive' and 'Rose Red' were shot here. But it's gone down since," says Joan Kalhorn, who heads the Seattle branch of Screen Actors Guild (SAG), a union many stage actors join to get screen work.

Actors look now to the relatively new field of "voice-over" speaking parts for interactive computer games.

But Lopez says much of this work goes to lower-paid, nonunion actors, who don't get the pension and health benefits SAG contracts guarantee.

Playing the odds

Given the unfavorable odds of succeeding here, there are still many clear-eyed, sincere hopefuls like Alycia Delmore, who marches into her ACT audition with head held high and delivers her tryout monologues smoothly.

Not that there's a specific role for her on the horizon. This is just an "open call," a chance for ACT to check out the talent.

"Thank you for coming in," ACT artistic director Kurt Beattie tells Delmore, promising to keep her photo and résumé on file.

Later, winding down in a cafe, Delmore voices her dreams of playing Chekhov and Shakespeare roles.

"I just want to make a living and do good work," she says. "I never got into this business to become a movie star."

Her big aim today is simply to land a part at ACT or another major theater. "Ego-wise it sure would be nice," says the Seattle native.

"I could finally say to my grandma, 'I'm a real actor now.' "