Actors As Educators: How Teaching Virtual Theatre Courses Gave Working Actors An Income During Covid

By Maya Gengozian

Business Feature, October 30, 2021

October 2021, New York, NY -- Lily Soto in rehearsal with the cast of "In Pieces" at NYU Steinhardt, Photo by Maya Gengozian for NYU Journalism

Live performance was halted with the Covid-19 shutdown in March 2020, but one outlet for performance took a virtual approach and gave many actors a way to earn a living: online theater classes. Even actors who already had established studios altered their business model to adapt to what was in demand and reach eager students across the globe.

Working in theater can be an unstable way to make a living, especially with the pandemic we’re still living in, so the virtual approach that was mastered during the pandemic could offer a consistent income when live performance isn’t an option.

The pandemic hit Broadway the hardest. When live performance is put on pause, so are professional actors’ and creative teams’ source of income. Many occupations around the world were able to turn to their computers and go the “work from home” route, but the arts were forced to stay on hold.

In a survey conducted by The Actors Fund in May 2021, they found that of 7,163 artists they helped in 2020, almost half either fell behind on their rent or mortgage or had to change their housing situations. These artists already had a low median income -- $34,186 -- so getting them back to work was a necessity.

Actors need their jobs back, of course, but the country needs the arts back just as much. The Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that as of 2019, the arts accounted for 4.3% -- $919.7 billion -- of the country’s overall economy, employing around 5.2 million jobs.

Broadway actors Matt Deangelis and his wife, Christine Dwyer, opened their teaching studio, The Working Studio, in 2017. Deangelis said it just started as a way to earn some extra cash. Their focus was coaching young actors auditioning for professional jobs. But, when the pandemic hit, their clientele “dried up;” their target audience didn’t have the money to pay for coachings, and they didn’t have jobs to prepare for.

They had to shift their thinking and figure out what clientele they should target their teaching towards. “The answer was parents of teenagers because teenagers still want to do this,” Deangelis said.

Deangelis and Dwyer moved back to Dwyer’s home in Massachusetts and started a “serious business partnership” with Dwyer’s childhood voice teacher, Noel Smith, a well-renowned voice teacher throughout Massachusetts. Together, they created The Aspiring Artists Program, a college audition prep program for seniors in high school looking to major in musical theatre or contemporary voice. They started teaching students in person in MA in a Covid-safe studio as well as offering virtual classes.

“It’s been a lot harder now that we are back in New York and Christine and I both have jobs again,” Deangelis said. As Broadway started reopening, Deangelis and Dwyer moved back to NYC, so they started doing their part of The Aspiring Artists Program virtually.

Deangelis said managing their full-time jobs of teaching their students in The Aspiring Artists Program and their full-time jobs as working actors in NYC has been a struggle, but it is still a new program, so they’re working through it as they go.

Having the virtual option, too, has allowed them to continue teaching their students in Massachusetts, even from their home in NYC.

Deangelis says that if everything goes well this audition season, they hope to continue the program and do a mixture of virtual and in-person coachings. “We started [the virtual form] out of necessity,” Deangelis said, but it’s given them a sort of launching pad to teach out of NYC as well as Boston and other areas of the country; wherever they have the teachers.

Many actors like Deangelis and Dwyer have restarted their lives in New York as Broadway and other professional theatre returns, but the lives they created for themselves in the pandemic can’t be left behind. While virtual outlets have been exhausted throughout the last year and a half, maybe they can continue to open up opportunities to reach people all over the world.

Currently, Matt Deangelis can be seen in the cast of Waitress on Broadway, and Christine Dwyer can be seen singing for the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall.

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