“I think life is really great and fun when you don't have to worry about just a crappy day job,” Nick Josten says in way of advice to others who have that artistic sensibility in Reno. “And there's so many wonderful artists in this town and it's sad that they have to just keep clocking in and just do their art on the side. It'd be nice if there were more people in Reno who could just, you know, just do art and live.”
Local theatergoers have recently gotten to see Josten as both Bruce the shark in a parody of Jaws and a six-year-old boy who gets eaten by a shark, “so I kind of have to eat myself on stage.”
The show runs until the end of July at Good Luck Macbeth Theatre.
Josten is also finishing up a novel, and working in the voice industry and with local films, especially in the horror genre.
Carp-e Diem in which Josten stars is available on Amazon and other platforms.
Josten credits this burst of creativity to quitting his nine to five and being in the right place at the right time.
He remembers the day he quit his “regular” job at the local Patogonia precisely: March 17th, 2022. He has no regrets.
“It’s a [three] billion dollar company, but everyone I worked with had to work two or three jobs to get by,” he said. Now he’s happy to be his own boss for multiple pursuits.
“I was just an extra in a friend's production,” he says of his film acting debut. “And the director of photography for that saw me kinda wandering around in the cowboy outfit. He's like, you know, that looks like a guy who can leap into somebody's house and kill all the occupants, but still seem likable. I want to see what he can do for this part that I want him in… I got the part, and it was a lead role in his feature film, his first feature film, which was absolutely terrifying. Like I'd never really been on film before, like just as an extra in the background. And they were trusting me with this huge part in their first feature. And it was just such an amazing experience that I wanted to learn whatever I could about filmmaking.”
The film which we reviewed on Our Town Reno was called Carp-e Diem with Mad Wife Productions. While acting, Josten also helped on set, up to now directing his own short film, and helping with screenwriting.
“It feels like … actually getting paid to go to film school,” he said during our interview on a hot, searing day in the shade behind Good Luck Macbeth Theater. “The entire Reno film scene's really starting to blossom and grow. There's so many amazing filmmakers around town.”
Josten has a quickly growing list of work on IMDb.
Josten calls his career progression “illogical.” He went to undergrad in South Dakota to study literature and philosophy, moved to Japan to teach English for five years, and then went to grad school in Vancouver, Canada for a library program.
Halfway through his master’s though, he realized it wasn’t for him. To find a new focus, he started doing standup comedy and getting work in the voiceover industry.
“They had this program on campus the access and diversity program, where they had students read textbooks and case studies and things like that for students who were visually impaired students who couldn't actually read the text. So that's kind of how I got involved with voiceover, just volunteering to read, sociological essays and things like that. And the people working there recommended I try pursuing voiceover a little more seriously and so I took a workshop and got an agent and started doing some voiceover gigs up there and started getting more involved with standup.”
When his grandmother got sick, he decided to return to northern Nevada where he grew up.
“After my grandma died, I grew roots here and I just kind of stuck steady, stayed around here.”
“I provide voice overs for commercials, corporate narration, e-learning projects, and animation,” his Facebook voice over page reads.
Josten started doing standup in Reno, pre-pandemic, and won his first Wednesday night at the Third Street bar, with his “absurd, storytelling” style. “Now looking back on it, I don't know if I ever was really a standup comedian … I was more interested in sketch and just like doing random weird characters.” Now he feels film is a better outlet for him. “I enjoy writing weird random characters and, you know, telling more of a story rather than just like doing jokes.”
His primary income is voiceover work from narration for local businesses to doing “monster voices” for mobile video games sold in South Korea. He’s building his own sound booth to do more of this work from home.
While putting it all together, he does regret Reno is getting more expensive, making it challenging for indie artists.
“It just makes it harder and harder to work and, and live as an artist. And it seems like a lot of people don't really want to pay artists for what they do. But, yeah, just keeping your nose down and like most of my day is spent like auditioning, writing grants, trying to get money to do these sorts of things, [but] actually getting to do it is kind of like the dessert on top. I can't see myself going back to a nine to five,” he said.
He recommends it to others. “Once I quit the day job and started being able to focus on just doing the artistic stuff, it seemed like everything started to blossom and I was just, I'm available to do things so people contact me to do things and I've just had so many fun opportunities since not having my leg chained to a desk.”
He’s thought of moving to Los Angeles to pursue in person acting classes, but with the current writers’ strike he’s put that on hold.
“I also have this good relationship with Mad Wife Productions, where it's kind of, they're already giving me opportunities to direct and get involved with the screenwriting and everything,” he said of local opportunities also keeping him here. “That's one of those things that I'd be moving down to LA to get involved with. And I already have it here in Reno. Right now, I'm definitely leaning towards sticking around for a while, but it is just kind of one of those things where you want to shoot your shot and see what happens in the big leagues. But I don't know if I even want to be in the big leagues. Like I'm having fun doing what I am doing right now, and I'm making ends meet. It seems kind of dumb to screw up a good thing. Like I might've landed in paradise and not even realize it until I leave, you know? So maybe at some point I'll leave, but for right now, I'm pretty happy where I am,” he concluded.