Tax Advice for Actors From an Actor

Today I'm republishing an article I wrote for Backstage:Unscripted about tax season for performers. The deadline is coming up, people! Start sorting through all your receipts if you haven't done so already. Something new I'm trying out this year is to file my receipts in a 12 pocket folder according to what category they could be deducted under. That should make next tax season easier than sorting through a shoebox of crumpled receipts.


Doing your own taxes isn't that hard if you have basic information on how the system works. If you need help, I recommend the New Tax Guide for Writers, Artists, Performers & Other Creative People by Peter Jason Riley. If you are an equity member, an organization called VITA makes appointments to help you with your taxes for free. 


See below to read the article!

The Bunny Goes to Bahrain

The last week has been extremely busy with getting back to rehearsal, catching a few local auditions....and packing!

We are traveling to the Kingdom of Bahrain to be part of the Spring of Culture festival (Andrea Bocelli and 80's rock band Osiris are at the festival right before us. We like to think of them as our warm up act). We are performing in the ancient Arad Fort, which will house a theater with 2,000 seats.

Isn't our above poster cool? I've heard that it is all over the country.

Part of our rehearsal process has included Arabic and culture lessons. I'll be blogging along the way, and look forward to sharing tons of pictures with you! It's bound to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Because we are performing this show in a very different cultural context, there have been a few changes. We are cutting some American slang and jokes that children in another culture may not pick up on. There are no more public showings of affection between Mom and Dad; no hand holding, no kissing on the cheek, etc. This is challenging us to focus on the "heart" of the story. Ultimately it is a story about family, communication, and love which are universal themes.

Disclaimer if you are new to the blog:
*** I am an employee of the Kennedy Center and the expressed views above are purely my own. I do not speak on behalf of the Kennedy Center or the production I am apart of; I am merely sharing my experience and personal point of view.***

Getting Savvy

For the past ten days, I've been doing a daily grind of 8-5:30 at an office temp job in Times Square.

Wow, it is way more difficult than I thought to sit in one place for 8+ hours a day! I found my knees and back hurting, and I have a knot in my shoulders from slouching at the computer. The job was easy and the office had some friendly people; but I am always glad to leave. I get a thrill from trying on someone else's life, and if it's not for me, I can always leave it behind and move on. (Hmm....maybe that's why I like being an actor...)

The great thing about simple desk jobs is that you can use the computer to catch up on a lot of your own work. After the Savvy Actor weekend, I had tons of new things I wanted to implement. Perhaps the biggest task was to start "re-branding" myself and creating a consistent image across all my 100,000 online profiles.

I managed to pick a new headshot and implement a new, brighter color scheme across my social media platforms. The website redesign is coming up next. Since that's the biggest project, I've been putting it off for last :)

I created a newsletter to send to my friends, family, and colleagues with a career update using MailChimp (an amazing, free marketing tool!). In the past I've felt a little squishy about blatantly advertising to peoples' in-boxes, but I'm not going to apologize for my accomplishments. I want to let my contacts know that I'm still trucking, and if they don't want to read about it, they can always unsubscribe. I've gotten an overwhelmingly positive response so far, and plan to make this a quarterly thing. (If you'd like to get the newletter, you can sign up here.)

I'm headed back to DC tomorrow for rehearsals, and then the show travels abroad shortly thereafter. Stay tuned to the blog: I plan to keep posting while I'm there!