Answers from the Working Actor from Focal Press guides readers through the ins, outs, ups, and downs of the acting industry. The book is based on a column in the actors' trade paper, Backstage, that authors Jackie Apodaca and Michael Kostroff worked on together for nearly a decade. Their highly popular weekly feature, The Working Actor, fielded questions from actors all over the country. Their column was a fact-based, humorous, compassionate take on the questions actors most wanted answered. They used some of their most interesting, entertaining, and informative columns as launch points for this book.

Apodaca and Kostroff share an approach that is decidedly on the ground. They've both labored in the trenches just like their readers-dealing with auditions, classes, photos, resumes, rehearsals, contract negotiations, representatives, jobs, challenging colleagues, and the search for that elusive life/career balance. There are few absolutes in the acting profession and virtually no proven and reliable steps. Answers from The Working Actor deals honestly with the realities, providing facts, options, strategies, stories, points of view, and the wisdom of experience, while ultimately challenging readers to make their own decisions. This book will give new actors a head start on their journeys and remind experienced professionals that in the acting business there is never only one answer to any question.

Jackie Apodaca is a professor of theatre at Southern Oregon University. She has worked as an actor, director, and producer in theatre, film, and media, with companies such as the Roundabout, Denver Center, National Geographic, filmscience, Modern Media (head of production), Venice Theatre Works (associate artistic director), Shakespeare Santa Barbara (producing director), and Ashland New Plays Festival (associate artistic director). She spent more than a decade at Backstage.

Michael Kostroff is an established actor best known for his five seasons on HBO's The Wire and a long list of other television roles. He has toured nationally in The Producers and Les Miserables. From 2006 to 2012, he shared writing duties with Jackie Apodaca on Backstage's advice column.