The Working Actor: A Conversation with Linda Gillum
Linda Gillum embodies the definition of "working actor." She is an accomplished actor, director, casting director, teacher and mom. I recently sat down with her to chat about the many hats she wears, her current work on stage and her advice to actors. She is currently starring in Sweat by Lynn Nottage at the Paramount Theatre (in the newly renovated Copley Theatre space) in Aurora, IL. Performances run through April 24, 2022.
Kate McCoy:
Okay so here we go. I’m here with actress Linda Gillum. We are sitting in my home in Chicago, IL on a snowy March morning, so thank you for making the trek here.
Linda Gillum:
You’re welcome, Kate.
Kate:
I want to briefly run through your resume. The title of this piece is going to be “The Working Actor” and when I think of the working actor your name immediately comes to mind. You are currently starring in Sweat by Lynn Nottage at the Paramount Theatre in Aurora. First, can you just tell us a little bit about that show?
Linda:
Sure, it’s about the struggles of factory workers between 2000 and 2008, and the switch to industrial machinery where they start wanting to get cheaper labor and using mechanicals instead of people, and using non-union labor. And so we all fight for our rights in this small town in Reading, Pennsylvania. And there’s a lot of history there with some of us; our parents and grandparents all worked at this factory. So now our jobs are on the line. It also deals with class as well because there’s a shift in dynamics with white and black workers, where a Black woman gets promoted to management and has to make the really tough decision of locking out her coworkers/friends. It takes place in a bar and it’s where they all gather, and so there’s good times (celebrating birthdays) and then there’s some pretty rough times.
Kate:
It’s an excellent play, I’ve seen another production of it a few years ago and it’s wonderful. You are currently in tech, so thank you again for being here because any actor knows it’s the worst time to have any obligations other than the theatre.
Linda:
That’s why the coffee is good. (laughter)
Kate:
Let me know if you need a refill. So, aside from Paramount you have also worked as an actress at A Red Orchid, Remy Bumppo, Court Theatre, Steppenwolf…just to name a few. But you are not just an actor, you also have directed. Let’s see here, you've directed at Shattered Globe, Noble Fool, Next Theatre, and a few others here. You’re also a teacher. You teach at Acting Studio Chicago, and Remy Bumppo, too, yes?
Linda:
Yes.
Kate:
Great. And you’re also a Casting Director, and you do casting for Remy Bumppo. And it says here - which I did not know this before so if this is still true, do tell - that you’re also a speech consultant for corporate executives?
Linda:
Yes.
Kate:
Do you still do that?
Linda:
I don’t, actually. I did that, let’s see, 2005 to 2009. And some of the people I did coaching for were in the insurance and banking industry, and then as you know what happened in 2008 - everything crashed - and I was a consultant, so of course, you know, we don’t need that anymore! But it was a great gig while I had it, and sometimes I do a little bit of freelancing on the side if someone needs a speech consultant.
Kate:
Wow. And then you’ve also been on screen, most recently in Chicago P.D., I think?
Linda:
Yes
Kate:
So basically it sounds like you lead a very boring life and have nothing to do.
Linda:
Nothing.
Kate:
So, I just wanted to ask you, you clearly wear a lot of hats - do you think that is born out of necessity or desire, or both?
Linda:
I think both. Yeah. I slipped into casting kind of by accident. I belonged to a theatre company called Defiant.
Kate:
R.I.P. Defiant.
Linda:
Yeah, R.I.P. And we were a bunch of, you know, ragtag group of students at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign where I got my M.F.A.. And we started a little company down there, and we all moved up to Chicago and we were here from 1993 to 2004, so a really nice eleven years for a group of kids who had no money. And I directed a lot. I directed downstate and I also directed here in Chicago for Defiant. And what I loved about directing - one of the things I loved about the directing process - was the casting. And so then I just kind of slipped into it via directing and found myself doing more and more of it. And when I joined Remy Bumppo in 2001 - and once again we were just kind of a small company, everybody…we all pitched in and did something - I became the resident Casting Director in 2003. Yeah, and so once again just kind of slipped into it. And then I find that I am actually a better actor when I’m also casting or directing, because sitting on both sides of the table is super helpful. It just takes the mystery out of the whole audition process, so that I know going in as an actor…I kind of know what is in my control and what is not. And it just helps take a little bit of pressure off. And also as a teacher, I can teach those things to students.
Kate:
That’s such a good point, too because I do think a lot of actors who haven’t been on the other side of the table, they, you know, they don’t get the role, they think, "What did I do wrong?" And so many times it has nothing to do with them. It’s maybe height-wise they didn’t work with this other actor that was already cast or, you know, a scheduling thing, or whatever it might be. So, I think that’s a really good tip for actors out there is that, number one, work begets work, so when you are doing directing at one thing and kind of slip into the casting director and then also you’re acting, that’s how you make your connections and then that’s how you continue to get hired project after project. And, so you went to Illinois, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign…Champaign-Urbana?
Linda:
Urbana-Champaign.
Kate:
(laughter) Okay great - I was going to ask what made you choose Chicago, but that seems like it was the natural progression from that school to here if you were already with a group of people that you started a company with and all moved up together.
Linda:
Yes. I’m originally from Oklahoma - Tulsa, Oklahoma - and, you know, obviously when I got my B.F.A., in my young mind, it was L.A., New York or Chicago. That was kind of it. I did have a fellow graduate that was going to Seattle, and I actually entertained the thought of going there with her, but I had a teacher that really suggested that I look into grad school. And so I did, and when I went to Urbana-Champaign we were just two and half hours south of Chicago. So then the progression from Oklahoma to Chicago made sense because it’s the big city in the Midwest, you know? And I thought, oh, I can start there and move to L.A. or New York if I want to. But on top of that, then I belonged to this theatre company and we all moved up to Chicago, and then to top it off we also had a showcase, and I got representation. So everything just kind of lined up that the arrow definitely pointed to Chicago. I do have to say though, in ’97 I decided to go to L.A. during pilot season to see if I wanted to work in Casting in TV and Film. I thought that time was better than any, and so I rented a studio apartment, I went from January through May, and I just hit the ground running and I started working for talent agents, literary agents, casting directors…at one point the best job I had was working at New Line Cinema, and they happened to be casting - at that point it was called Two Brothers - it ended up being called American History X. And I just was a fly on the wall during that casting process and I really learned a tremendous amount. But I decided that L.A. was not the city for me as far as making my home base.
Kate:
Can you talk about that a little bit? What made you decide that?
Linda:
Yeah, it was very isolating. You know, in Chicago it’s almost - we’re in a big city but it’s compact. It’s a community. Everybody knows everybody, you run into everybody, it’s super easy to see somebody. It’s easy to see somebody for coffee, or to go to a show, or go for a drink, or go to dinner, and in L.A. it takes effort. In order to see somebody, just even for a drink, you have to travel an hour because of traffic. There’s really - public transport is kind of, you know, nada, right? You have to have a car, it’s more expensive, and I found that I actually knew more people in L.A. than I did in Chicago and I never saw them. And it was not out of us not wanting to see each other, it was just really difficult. And before I knew it I’m sitting in this studio apartment and I thought, “When I was in Chicago I saw people every single day, even if I wasn’t planning it I would run into somebody.” And we all were encouraging each other, we’d go to each other’s shows and everybody was really encouraging, you know? There were bonds here. The best word I can use is community, whereas in L.A. it was a bit more cutthroat, it was a bit more “What can you do for me?” And so there was this pretense: even if you were really good friends with somebody there was always that veneer of, “Is there something you can do for me?” And it just became really, I don’t know, just not my sensibility whatsoever, even though I loved the work I was doing, I knew that living day-to-day I would be miserable.
Kate:
I had a similar experience. I used to live in L.A. I was there for eight years, so I put some time in. But it was a similar thing of, number one, everyone there is in the industry. Everyone. And there didn’t seem to be a whole lot of diversity in terms of what people were interested in or what they did. It was, you know, everyone had a screenplay, and everyone had an audition, and, you know, it just - that got boring. And yes, I agree that it was - it’s a very much “what can you do for me” kind of town. Not to, like, hate on L.A. because I know there’s a lot of people that are like, “L.A.’s the best!” And for some people it is. But I was there before Lyft and Uber and all of that was around so it was incredibly difficult to get places, whereas Chicago I think is a lot more pedestrian-friendly. And so you’re out walking, you’re on the train, you know, whatever, and yeah, you run into people. I tell people all the time: L.A. is a great place to visit and a great place to work but a terrible place to live.
Linda:
You hit it on the nose.
Kate:
Okay, I want to talk about your casting a little bit. So how we met was I interviewed to be your intern when I first moved here, and for some crazy reason you said, “Okay!”
Linda:
(laughter) It wasn’t crazy, it was spot on.
Kate:
And I just wanted to ask you, because you’re doing so many things all at once - because you have to train a new person every three months to be your assistant, essentially - doesn’t that get old? Do you wish that you could just hire a person or does the internship program - is it more helpful? Tell me a little bit about that.
Linda:
Yeah. Well I think there are three parts to the internship: it was auditions - running auditions, showcases - attending showcases, and then the administrative. And I would say the administrative was the part that was more training, about, you know, the database and the filing and all that. Showcases, it’s just, “Here, meet me at this theatre and we’re gonna go in together and we’ll chat after.” So that was pretty easy. Auditions was kind of, you know, it’s interesting - some people come in with that, almost I want to say stage manager mentality of being super organized, and really knowing how to schedule actors and how to get them sides and the script and run an audition. For some people that just fits like a glove and I really don’t have to do much. For other people it’s something they need to learn, and if I can be instrumental in helping somebody learn that skill I really think it helps them for the future. For anything, really. And so, I found with you, you just came ready-made for it, you’re a very organized person.
Kate:
I literally had zero experience.
Linda:
(laughter) But that’s okay, you know? Because you just got it immediately, and it makes it easier for me. And then sometimes I would have overlap where I would have, well, Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall interns, and sometimes there would be a little bit of overlap where the Winter intern can train the Spring intern. As they’re leaving, the other one’s coming in. And that helped, especially if I was in a show or out of town or whatever, so that was really nice.
Kate:
Nice. Yeah, if I were to give advice to actors I would say intern in a casting office.
Linda:
Yes.
Kate:
Because, and I’ll let you speak a little to it, too, but just even being a reader or just seeing that process, seeing who comes in, seeing how different actors approach the work differently, and what that teaches you. Can you expound on that a little bit?
Linda:
Oh definitely. I think one of my favorite stories is casting The Voysey Inheritance by Harley Granville-Barker, adapted by David Mamet. We did the auditions, well we first started talking about the script in 2007, and it’s a one hundred-year-old script. It’s a Ponzi scheme. It’s a family called the Voyseys and there’s six children and a mother and a father, and they’re extremely wealthy. But you come to find out the reason why they are wealthy is because they are living off of their clients’ money. And then when their clients want to be paid, they pay them with other clients’ money. And they’re doing this whole scam, this whole Ponzi scheme. In the course of the play, at the very beginning, the father dies and the conundrum for the family is: do we carry this on? And it’s called Voysey Inheritance because the grandfather was doing it, and he passed it on to his son and that father passed it on to his son. And the family is torn. Some of the kids don’t want to do this anymore, and don’t want to live on the lives of others, and some of the kids are like, “No, we want to live within the means that we’re accustomed to.” So there’s this rift in the family, and they get called out by one of their clients, and so it’s, you know, they can all go to jail. So, anyway, I gave you that backstory because we were casting the role of Hugh, which is the youngest son. And Hugh is an artist, and he’s not at all interested in being a financial person. So he doesn’t want the money, he doesn’t want to be any part of it. And we were casting this role, and by the time we got to callbacks we had two young men we were calling back. Tom and Bob were their names. I had two casting interns from Roosevelt, they were both freshmen. And they were sitting there at the table, and I was sitting there, and our director, James Bohnen, who founded the company, was sitting there, and then we had a reader - Raymond Fox - who was playing the elder brother Edward. And so the scene was between Edward and Hugh. We brought Tom and Bob in for Hugh, and Tom came in and he was just disheveled. He had long, curly disheveled hair, his teeth were kind of crooked, and he was kind of - he just was disheveled is the best way I can use it - but he came in completely off-book, just really tore it up, was really tortured, and just gave a brilliant read. And our hearts were broken for him, you know? James gave him a little bit of an adjustment, he did it, and then he walked out of the room. We were like, “Wow, he was amazing.” Then Bob came in. Bob was a hundred and eighty degrees from Tom. He came in, he had - his hair was almost, like, John F. Kennedy. It was very coiffed, and he came in a suit. I mean, he was very put together. He looked like a financial kind of guy, right? And completely off-book, banged it up, did a great job. He actually had some humor, which was interesting, which we hadn’t seen in Tom, but James gave him the adjustment to just have a little bit more of the heart and the anguish that he had seen in Tom that he liked. Bob did it, took the direction, was brilliant. And he walks out. And we all look at each other. Because they both were right. They both were right for the role. They both were very, very well-prepared, and they both took direction. But they were so vastly different. So our director asked Raymond, who was playing the brother, he said, “Which one do you think?” And Raymond goes, “No, no, don’t put this on me!” And so James goes, “Okay.” And he reaches into his pocket, and he gets a quarter, and he goes to flip a coin, right? My interns - their eyes were as big as saucers -
Kate:
Like mine right now!
Linda:
I can only imagine what they were thinking. “Oh my god, this is how casting happens?” But then James put the quarter back, he goes, “Just kidding, but really, Raymond, please give me your thoughts here.” And Raymond said, “Well, they both are right for the role, and I enjoyed working with both of them. It depends on which story you want to tell.” And James thought on it for a moment, and he took both of their headshots, and he just very, like, an eighth of an inch, just raised Tom’s up. And Tom got the part, because the story that James wanted to tell was when the family goes down in flames, Tom is not going to be okay. You know, he’s gonna be living in a box under the bridge and that is going to be tragic. Bob? You can imagine that he was gonna pick himself back up and become an entrepreneur and be alright. So the story that James wanted to tell was the more tragic one, even though Bob was an amazing actor, was very well-prepared, and was right for the role. And this is back in the time when I used to call actors to tell them they didn’t get it. We don’t do that anymore, but I’m an empathetic casting director, so what can I say? But anyway, I did call Bob, and I talked to him about it. I didn’t tell him the story, obviously, but I just thanked him for being prepared and told him that, you know, he was amazing and that we would think about him for something else. And then he went on doing Noises Off at the Cleveland Play House, he now lives in L.A., he’s fine. But I think the moral of this is what if when Bob didn’t get that role, that he just beat himself up and said, “Dammit, that was my part. I was right for that, and I worked my ass off. I was really well-prepared. Why didn’t they cast me?” And what if he spiraled into this, I don’t know, depression or “I don’t want to be an actor anymore” or those things that we beat ourselves up on because it’s so personal. We bring ourselves to the roles when we audition. And what if he had done that? Then the world would have missed out on a really good actor. So I tell that story a lot just to tell actors that there is so much that is out of your control, and you just have to let that be and know that the universe will take care of you and it will come back in some other form.
Kate:
That’s so good, that’s so good. I was gonna ask you what would be your one piece of advice to actors and I think that’s it.
Linda:
Yeah. Well, along the lines of what’s in your control and what’s not in your control, right, and you can beat yourself up; “I didn’t get that part, I didn’t get that and I worked really hard or I’m right for it” or whatever you’re telling yourself. And the thing is, is that we have to remember that we are always planting seeds, and we don’t know when that seed is gonna come into fruition, we just have to be patient. And just to tell you a brief anecdote, I auditioned for Closer when it was at Steppenwolf. I auditioned for the role of Anna, and the director thought I was too young and literally stopped me in the middle of my audition. It was horrifying. But she stopped me in the middle of my audition and said, “I’m sorry, I just can’t get past the fact that you’re too young for this part.” And luckily the Casting Director, who was Phyllis Schuringa at the time, said, “Could she read for Alice?” And the director said, “Yes, by all means.” And so they had me come in the next day and read for Alice. Luckily she let me get through the whole audition, but at the end she did tell me, she said, “You know, you are right in between these ladies.” So I was given a little bit of a gift that I found out why I wasn’t gonna get it in the moment, where I didn’t have to perseverate over it later. But a year later, that same director called me in for Serenading Louie for the role of Mary, and it was for Roadworks. And when I walked into the room she said, “I remember you from that Closer audition. And you weren’t right for that, but when I got this project…this is the part, this is the one.” And I got it. And it was in my top five shows that I’ve done in my career - Serenading Louie. It’s one of my favorite roles that I’ve ever done.
Kate:
That’s awesome.
Linda:
I didn’t know it at the time, but I had to be patient and know that it was gonna hit at the right time.
Kate:
That’s so good. I have a feeling I know the answer to this, but go ahead and describe your typical day.
Linda:
Oh boy. It’s always different. You know, I’m also an adjunct at DePaul and in the Fall I teach the M.F.A. 3s Audition for Theatre. And so if I were to look at that kind of schedule it could be that I go and teach that class and then I might have an audition in the afternoon, I might have a show that I’m doing in the evening, and in the meantime I have two small children, and so I’m also getting them ready for school, and picking them up. And so that is, you know, if I’m teaching, and I’m acting, and I’m being a mom - those are three hats in one day I would say. But then there could be a day when I’m running auditions, when I’m a Casting Director, and mom, and maybe those are two hats that I’m wearing in one day. I think right now, because I’m in tech, I’m mom and actor and crazy person. Just because, you know, my commute is two hours a day, and so I’m now at twelve-hour days right now because of tech. And, you know, I’m also a mom that gets up early with the kids and feeds them breakfast and packs their lunches and gets them dressed. And thank god my husband takes them to school in the snow, and then I can come over and have a cup of coffee and talk with Kate.
Kate:
Yay! Well, this has been lovely, and I just want to say thank you for trekking it over here.
Linda:
Oh, you’re welcome.
Kate:
And imparting some of your wisdom and insight. And Sweat runs through?
Linda:
Sweat runs March 9 through April 24.
Kate:
Awesome. So if you’re in Chicago, you should go check that out at the Paramount Theatre and see Linda Gillum in all her glory and thank you so much.
Linda:
Thanks, Kate.
