ode to a journeyman actor

“So many things have to come together in you as an organism for you to keep doing this. It’s an extraordinary combination. Talent isn’t the only component. It’s deeply personal why you do it, why you keep doing it. ” - Ron Van Lieu

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The audio recording of this Morton Train is available to paid subscribers here.

I was 13 years old when I took my first acting class. It was a 4-week summer program called the Young Actors Institute in Louisville, my hometown. What I remember most is having an immediate sense of belonging. Not only on the campus of the Youth Performing Arts School (which I would eventually attend), but also in the exploration of the craft, in the environment of the theatre… I felt right at home.

For the entirety of high school, two out of my six daily classes were theatre classes. Whenever I was in a play, whether it was a school play or a play at a theatre in town, I’d have rehearsals and performances to manage in the evenings and weekends alongside regular homework. I was quite an ambitious and busy teenager. This got ramped up during my four years as a student in the rigorous theatre department at the University of Evansville. So, before ever stepping foot in New York City or Los Angeles, I was a passionately devoted “theatre major,” from age 14 to 22.

I share all this to explain that being an actor is foundational to my life, to who I am as a person. Being an actor never felt like a choice I made. (Just like being gay was never a choice.) It’s simply who I am. And even though I haven’t had most of the opportunities that I waited for and worked for and hoped for, even though acting jobs have been disappointingly sporadic, the actor path has shaped every aspect of my life since adolescence. (Which is quite an amazing thing for me to realize and articulate.)

This summer, my actor path took me to the picket line. SAG-AFTRA, my union of twenty years, has gone on strike against sociopathic corporate forces, in solidarity with the Writers Guild of America. We artists find ourselves participating in what is truly a nationwide labor movement. Fed up with extreme income inequality, these strikes of late are a testament to the dignity of work, to the self-respect of every worker.

Yes, acting is distinctly different from other forms of employment. Unlike workers in other industries when they go out on strike, most actors didn’t actually “walk off the job.” The great majority of us are employed as actors only a few weeks or months out of the year, if we’re lucky. We are on strike so that when jobs do come along, and we contribute to the creation of a television show or movie, we are treated with respect and paid fairly. We actors are on strike in support of one another, standing for the dignity of our shared profession.

The President of SAG-AFTRA, Fran Drescher, in one of her recent speeches, said, “It's all about the journeyman actor, all of these negotiations. That's really why the union exists, to protect and defend their rights because employers understand that they desperately want to work.”

Yes, we journeymen actors desperately want to work. And we sacrifice our time, our financial security, and our energy (blood/ sweat/ tears) just to have the occasional opportunity to do so.

Long ago, I read somewhere that “in our society, actors are either deified or discarded.” I’ve thought about that recently with our treatment by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers and by anyone who has rolled their eyes at the notion of actors being on strike. When Drescher stated that we “cannot keep being marginalized and disrespected and dishonored,” she wasn’t referring to the deified actors and movie stars. She was talking about us.

For any journeyman actor out there who hasn’t always felt dignified or respected, who has felt marginalized within our dysfunctional business, who perhaps has even felt discarded, I see you & I celebrate you & I’ve written you a little pep talk for the picket line. I think it’s incredible that:

• You, quite viscerally, know what it’s like to make magic happen with fellow collaborators, both in front of a camera and on a stage.

• You have managed an almost impossible lifestyle.

• You have battled cynicism and experienced rejection in ways that have made you incredibly resilient.

• You have a myriad of gifts that can be utilized in other professions and circumstances.

• You may even be what’s known as a Hyphenate, managing a whole other career in addition to acting which is a great feat.

• You can do what you do at any age.

• You are more comfortable at navigating the unknown than most people.

• You have courageously put yourself out there again and again, taking risk after risk, which is admirable.

• You get to create your own relationship to the work, to ambition, to the in-between times. And it doesn’t have to make sense to anyone else.

• You are an artist. Your life is a work of art, too.

• You have done some really interesting jobs to pay the bills that have been character-building and, quite likely, adventurous.

• You are part of an intergenerational community. (“Actors are one family over the entire world.” - Eleanor Roosevelt)

• You have developed special friendships and met extraordinary human beings along your actor path and because of your actor path.

• You have done absolutely brilliant, satisfying work in the hidden worlds of classrooms and audition spaces.

• The AMPTP shareholders and executives cannot do what you do.

• Acting is a noble profession that’s been around a helluva lot longer than Wall Street.

• You have some terrific (outrageous, amazing) stories to tell about your experiences as an actor.

• You are a perpetual student of what it means to be human.

• You’ve been trained in the Art of Listening and the world needs listeners.

• You are unique. Your career is unique. Your life path is unique.

And now off I go, continuing along my actor path, ever hopeful, never bored, eager to see what’s next.

In solidarity,

E.M.

standing tall behind the Hollywood sign | 2018 | photo by Matthew Nelson-Hayne