Making a home in New York City is a lot like keeping a show running on a frayed Equity contract: the moment you think you’ve got your footing, someone changes the blocking. The bodega that knew your coffee order becomes a bank. Your rent-stabilized walk-up gets a “luxury” lobby and a new name. The subway …

There is a particular kind of New York City morning that smells like wet cardboard and opportunity. I am standing in my kitchen, which is also my living room, which is also, on certain desperate days, my rehearsal studio. I am between gigs. Again. And I am trying to remember if I am a person …

The Panic of the Open Calendar Day four of unemployment hits with a very specific kind of dread. The early bliss—sleeping past noon, shuffling around in the same pajama pants I wore in Gypsy at the Straw Hat in Poughkeepsie—curdles fast. A calendar that used to be a jigsaw of audition slots, callback times, and …

I used to think routine was the enemy. It was for accountants, for people with dental plans, for the kind of actor who books a three-year contract on a procedural and buys a condo in Weehawken. Not for me. I was a creative. I needed chaos, last-minute auditions, the electric panic of learning sides on …