17-year-old stage manager, Kendall Stokes, sits front row in the creative theater room at Take 2 Performance Studio. She and 14 other students sit before the instructor as he struggles to get everyone’s attention.
Teen acting instructor Grant Davis lists off the order of each students’ on-stage appearance in an upcoming showcase.
It’s a group with many aspiring for possible fame and fortune. Like any person in any line of work, actors don’t want a career that fails to make ends meet. However, many will soon realize that might mean having to leave the Biggest Little City.
This particular studio located near South Virginia Street and South Mccarran boulevard is home to a variety of actors in different chapters in their career. Each actor in Reno has their own unique set of challenges, but there are core struggles that each actor faces.
Stokes has been acting for a little over two years. Since she is homeschooled, acting has provided her an outlet to make friends and gain more experiences. It also allows her to pour her emotions into a character.
“It’s a freeing feeling that I hope everyone gets to experience one day,” she says.
She hopes to find financial stability as an actor and be able to help others financially in the future. Her family, mainly her grandmother and father, provides for her acting pursuits.
Her goal of signing with a talent agency is no easy or cheap task though, costing hundreds of dollars if not thousands for travel, tuition, auditions, and other expenses. As a minor with no agency, there isn’t any major work for her in our “gambling city,” she says.
Right now it’s just a waiting game until she finds the right agency. In the meantime, she is building her resume by taking minor roles and refining her skills in class.
24-year-old financial agent, Isaias Osuna, recently signed with a work talent agency based in Los Angeles. It was a competitive event with over 1000 actors from around the world, displaying their skills to producers and agencies.
Osuna was drawn into acting at a young age by Heath Ledger’s performance in Batman The Dark Knight. He has been cast as a villain, bully, but hopes to star as Batman himself one day.
Motivated by the goal to impact people with his performance the same way others have done for him he pursued acting throughout his teens. From there, he fell in love with the practice of learning a character.
In an industry where rejection is guaranteed, actors need something to sustain them mentally and financially.
Currently he works hard at balancing his acting dreams while taking care of his financial clients.
“I basically use my business and I use it as a way to invest and fund my acting career. However, not that many actors have that luxury,” says Osuna.
His business also gives him a flexible schedule that allows for more acting work to come through. Having the availability to travel, audition, and accept work in a short amount of time is an essential part of his plan to become the “Hollywood superstar,” he hopes to be.
Being an actor in Reno brings its own mental challenges. He found a lot of people here to be close minded and unsupportive of big dreams like his own.
“There’s no headquarters of Warner Brothers, or headquarters of Universal or Disney or Nickelodeon. Nothing like that is here… everything, if you really wanna make it, is in California,” says Osuna.
Reno does offer work for actors in theatre and with up and coming filmmakers. That work may grow in the coming years due to more and more legislative and commercial efforts to bring more film opportunities both to Las Vegas and here in northern Nevada, with competing proposals.
A 27-year-old former barista at Old World Coffee, Eden Steele, moved from Reno to LA on December 1st to chase his own dreams. Steele has starred in national commercials, student films, music videos, and modeling work. His name in Reno has been growing to the point where he can now decline work that he doesn’t believe in or doesn’t pay.
To make ends meet in pursuing acting full time Steele hopes to grow an income from social media, and as a last resort he says he will work as a barista again.
Acting was one of the first things that “finally gave him a vision.” Being in front of the camera for him does not feel like work at all. Seeing what he can accomplish, as well as providing Asian representation in the industry, gives him something he can be proud of.
Similar to Osuna, Steele has his own agent out in LA. He faces many of the typical early career actor struggles, with rejection, financial risk, and mental exhaustion all par for the course. For Steele the work in Reno was consistent and not short of creative fulfillment. However, he and his girlfriend who also acts say they grew too comfortable and not challenged enough in Reno.
To make new connections and keep busy, while looking for new acting work, Steele has already started martial art classes and acting classes. So far he feels relationships are very much “transactional” in LA.
While he sets his own path away from northern Nevada, he advises actors still in Reno to keep building their community, further hone in on their craft, stay polite with everyone, take more acting classes and get good headshots.