By Helen Harlan

Seven years ago, Hunter Hoffman was living a New York actor’s dream: He was cast as an understudy in “Sweat,” the critically acclaimed play nominated for three Tony Awards. On a Sunday in June 2017, Hoffman attended the prestigious awards ceremony at Radio City Music Hall. 

“Sweat” walked away empty-handed and the production closed two weeks later. 

“I think it closed on a Sunday, and [that] Tuesday, I went back to waiting tables,” Hoffman, 35, said.

Fast forward three years later and Hoffman was on stage at the B Street Theatre in “The Last Match,” a gig he booked after auditioning on a recommendation from an associate producer of “Sweat.” 

Today, he is a Sacramento actor. He recently closed “Now Circa Then” at Capital Stage and is a core company member at B Street. “I’ve been the busiest I’ve ever been as an actor living here in Sacramento. It’s incredible,” he said.

But theaters here — and nationwide — are struggling, and the future for their actors, crew and audience is uncertain. Yet, despite the odds, Hoffman is just one of many local actors making it work. Here, we pull the curtain back on what it’s like to be an actor in The Big Tomato.

“The Bug”

Conrad Crump is a former policy advocate and a current community organizer, mentor and father. At age 45, Crump wants to add another identity to that list: full-time actor.

Crump was bitten by the acting bug when he saw a production of “The Bluest Eye,” at Celebration Arts in 2014. Since then, he’s done seven shows on that same stage and recently completed their production of “Topdog/Underdog.” Crump just finished a six-week summer training program at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, including acting technique, voice, speech and movement classes. 

“To be on stage and become a character, and to fill in the blanks of that character, is something that I find fascinating. I would say, ultimately, that’s why I want to do this,” Crump said. “I’ve had the goal of wanting to be an actor, but never really thought it was realistic because I just didn’t see myself leaving Sacramento. … I still have that goal and those dreams. I don’t want to have any regrets.”

He’s aware the road ahead is often paved with rejection and financial uncertainty but said it’s worth it. Eventually, Crump intends to join the Actors’ Equity Association, the labor union representing actors and stage managers. But joining Equity, as it’s called in shorthand, has its own considerations.

To Equity or not to Equity?

Actors’ Equity Association, formerly called AEA, was founded in 1913. It aims to protect members against abuse by dictating — among other things — minimum payments and break requirements. Joining means a member cannot work at a non-union theater on a non-union contract, with some exceptions. 

“There are many reasons to be a member of AEA,” said Jerry Montoya, executive producer at B Street. “[Such as] health insurance, pension, wage protection, employment protection, the ability to receive an audition, access to the Actors Fund, access to the actors’ credit union, tax information, protection of work and image.“

Equity currently costs $1,800 to join, and members pay additional dues of $176 annually. Working dues are 2.5% of an actor’s gross earnings. To receive health insurance — arguably the most attractive benefit of joining — an actor must work 16 weeks a year at an “Equity house”; a theater that provides union contracts from season to season, negotiated annually. 

B Street is one of only three remaining local Equity houses, which includes Capital Stage and Broadway Sacramento. The fourth, Sacramento Theatre Company, went dark last year. 

“Equity membership companies that hire professional actors for what you could argue [is] a ‘living wage’ have slowly gone away,” said local theater veteran and B Street company member Jamie Jones. “COVID just did a number to everyone everywhere. Theaters closed everywhere. We’ve lost membership and subscribership due to people being fearful about coming back, even now.”

Jones, 65, has been an Equity actor for over 30 years. She got her union card “way back when” from doing children’s theater with Buck Busfield, one of B Street’s founding members. She is a company member at B Street. But unlike core company members, she is not guaranteed a set number of Equity weeks a year, which could potentially qualify actors for health benefits from the union.

Some actors, like Omari Tau, find it worthwhile to balance Equity acting work with other pursuits.

Tau, 50, wrapped up a one-week run in “The SpongeBob Musical” with Broadway at Music Circus at the end of June. He played Perch Perkins and was also in the ensemble. He has maintained his Equity status for over two decades and got his card on a 2002 national tour for “The Lion King,” where he played various parts, including Banzai, one of the hyenas. He’s done around 13 shows with Broadway at Music Circus since 2013. 

Though Tau used to get his insurance through the union, these days he gets his health benefits as a tenured music professor at Cosumnes River College. He also sings in bands and works locally in film and opera, ventures that have nothing to do with his Equity status. 

“At this point in my career, I don’t have to do a lot of musical theater and plays outside of my teaching; I’m busy enough that it’s fine for me to keep my [Equity] membership so that when I do an [Equity] project I am protected the way that I feel I need to be to participate,” Tau said.

And what about actors — Equity or not — making that “living wage” Jones mentioned? “It’s tough,” she said. “You teach. You coach. Maybe you have a marriage or partnership that does both.” Jones lives that last caveat. She’s married to Michael Stevenson, Capital Stage’s artistic director. “Everyone supplements. But that’s the actor’s life,” she said.

Hoffman has been an Equity actor since “Sweat.” He said he can’t live off the pay even in an amazing year when he does three union shows. “There are still six more months in the year. I do need to eat,” he said jokingly. 

To supplement, Hoffman teaches kids acting classes, music and stage combat through B Street and the CLARA. “I’ve been finding a lot of passion in teaching. That’s been a very fulfilling creative thing for me as well,” he said.

So, what’s next?

According to Jones, the future of Sacramento actors and the stages they grace rests in the hands of those on the other side of the curtain: the audience.

“They gotta go, and they gotta give,” Jones said. “Attend. Go. Bring a friend. Become ambassadors.”

Alissa Doyle has acted in Sacramento for a decade. Like Hoffman, Doyle teaches acting at the CLARA. This month, she can be seen in “Fairview,” at Capital Stage. She is not an Equity actor yet, even though she can join anytime. “I’ve recognized that I can simply get more work in this town at this point without being a member of the union,” she said. 

Doyle’s email signature reads “human woman, mother, partner, theatre artist,” and her passion for the stage is palpable. “I am not myself when I am not doing theater,” she said.

Her take on the future of Sacramento actors and the broader live-theater conundrum is cautionary, idealistic and radical all at once. “This gets to a deeper question: Is professional theater working anymore?” Doyle said. “We’ve been treating this art form as another economic wheel in the capitalist system. We have to value the human being behind the art. We aren’t doing that right now. On a national level, not just in Sacramento.”

And she has a plan to help fix it. Doyle will launch Balcony Theater Collective, her own theater troupe, this October. At the moment, she’s tight-lipped about the collective’s specifics, but her purpose for doing so is straightforward. 

“My personal mission as an artist is to value the artist first and to devise a new way of doing theater that values rest, compassion and sustainability,” she said. “That’s my heart for Sacramento going forward.”

This story was funded by the City of Sacramento’s Arts and Creative Economy Journalism Grant to Solving Sacramento. Following our journalism code of ethics and protocols, the city had no editorial influence over this story and no city official reviewed this story before it was published. Our partners include California Groundbreakers, Capital Public Radio, Outword, Russian America Media, Sacramento Business Journal, Sacramento News & Review, Sacramento Observer and Univision 19.