It’s an article of faith for many that Chicago theatre produces the best actors and artists. But what does it mean to be a Chicago theatre artist, when your physical address, at least part of the time, is in other cities? We talked to three actors, a director, and one very busy sound designer to get an idea of how the logistics of living in another town, but working a lot in Chicago (and vice versa) play out for them.

Two-Career Family in Two Towns

Steppenwolf Theatre ensemble member Kate Arrington hasn’t ever called Chicago home, except for her time as a theatre major at Northwestern University. The Brooklyn resident, who lives with actor Michael Shannon and their toddler daughter, Sylvie, has been a member of the ensemble since 2007, and will be in two shows back-to-back at Steppenwolf in the coming months—Bruce Norris’ A Parallelogram, opening in July, and Lisa D’Amour’s Detroit, which opens the new season in September. Last fall, Arrington was back at Steppenwolf for Eric Simonson’s Fake. Between rehearsals and performances, Arrington will spend at least five months in Chicago this year.

So how does she juggle life between two cities with a partner and a young child? “I wish I had a good answer,” Arrington says. “It’s kinda crazy. The one good thing I’ll say is that we sort of fight for each other more than we fight for ourselves. We’re both very good at saying ‘That’s just insane’ or ‘I know that means a lot to you, so do it.’”

Shannon just finished a run off-Broadway as the Stage Manager in David Cromer’s production of Our Town. (Michael McKean, who starred in Steppenwolf’s production of Tracy Letts’ Superior Donuts in Chicago and New York, takes over the part on June 2.) Shannon is also shooting the HBO series “Boardwalk Empire,” which films in Brooklyn. “It’s such an ensemble piece that he can go a week without working,” says Arrington. But she also notes that Shannon has postponed doing a New York run with Craig Wright’s Mistakes Were Made, which he performed in its world premiere last fall with his home Chicago company, A Red Orchid Theatre , so that she could do the D’Amour play. (Shannon’s run at A Red Orchid coincided with Arrington’s run in Fake.) “I read Detroit and was just blown away,” she says.

Arrington says that she and Shannon both turned down opportunities to be in the world premiere of Brett C. Leonard’s The Long Red Road, directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman at the Goodman Theatre this past winter. Shannon had to be in New York for shooting, and Arrington decided not to do it because of the separation required.

“The idea of Sylvie not getting to see her dad was just awful. There’s nothing that’s worth it. You feel like, ‘I love this play so much,’ but you think, ‘They’ll do a great job with it and my daughter will get what she needs.’” Arrington also says “I am aware of the fact that, as Sylvie gets older, it’s going to be harder to pick up and move somewhere for five months. So maybe it’s good to do two shows in a row now. I kind of have one slot a year [out of New York] available once she’s in real school.

Before her daughter was born, Arrington also worked a lot in California, but she now mostly divides her schedule between New York and her Steppenwolf family in Chicago. But even her work in New York sometimes involves working with other people who aren’t in the room. She notes that she learned the English dialect for Lucinda Coxon’s Happy Now? for Primary Stages’ production this spring by working with a dialect coach via Skype.

Arrington describes the split between New York and Chicago as, “We have lives here. [Arrington’s mother and two sisters also live in New York.] In Chicago, we are mostly there to do our work.” She and her family live in corporate housing supplied by Steppenwolf when she’s here to work. “It’s really not that bad, but you wouldn’t go out of your way to live there,” she says.

Arrington’s fellow Steppenwolf ensemble member, Rondi Reed, has been in New York with Wicked and August: Osage County (the play that won her a Tony Award for best featured actress in 2008) for the past few years. However, she says, “I still consider Chicago home.” She maintains a Chicago residence and she’ll be back here this summer when her obligations to Wicked are completed. Reed left the role of Madame Morrible in the Chicago production, with producer David Stone’s blessings, in order to do August in its Chicago, New York, and London runs. She’ll be reprising the role of Mattie Fae Aiken when the show goes to Sydney Theatre Company, run by Cate Blanchett and her husband, Andrew Upton, in August.

“For Chicago actors, going to New York is like going to Vegas,” says Reed. “It can hit big or be closed up and gone.”

Reed knows what she’s talking about: her first time on Broadway was with the Steppenwolf production of Jim Cartwright’s The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, which lasted only two weeks in 1994. But being in a hit show like Wicked and living there temporarily is a different ballgame.

“It’s hard to explain,” says Reed. “You’re kind of on an extended guest visa. That has upsides and downsides. Your friends who are not working—you want to socialize with them. But it’s incredibly expensive, so you take them out. The actors who have to live here and survive here can’t afford to do that.”

Reed also divided time between Chicago and Los Angeles in the 1990s and spent a lot of time on the road with Steve Martin’s Picasso at the Lapin Agile before officially leaving Los Angeles in 1999 to return to Chicago. But she still gets questions about where she lives.

“I went for an interview with an agent and they asked, ‘Where do you live?’ I told them, ‘I live where I’m working.’ And their attitude was, ‘Well if you don’t live in New York, we’re really not going to pursue this.’ I was like, ‘Well, I live in Chicago.’ Part of the reality is that you do end up flying to New York for auditions.”

Reed also says that she tries “not to step on people’s toes because of the residency issue,” but that “there is a certain—I won’t say resentment—but there is an attitude [from New York actors] about ‘we live here, we work here, and you come in from Chicago.’”

One of the benefits about her time in New York, Reed notes, is that it was easier to do film and television work. She most recently appeared as a judge in You Don’t Know Jack, the HBO film about Dr. Jack Kevorkian starring Al Pacino. She’s not currently slated to appear in anything at Steppenwolf next season. “I have nothing but admiration for people who make their base in New York,” says Reed. “I’m spoiled. I have an artistic home [with Steppenwolf].”

“I generally call myself a Chicagoan who is stuck in New York,” says Kate Buddeke. One of the founding members of American Blues Theater (which re-constituted under that name when Buddeke and many other ensemble members of American Theater Company split last spring), she’s back in Chicago for the American Blues production of Jack Kirkland’s Tobacco Road, based on the novel by Erskine Caldwell. But Buddeke, who is subletting her New York apartment, doesn’t have a permanent home in Chicago anymore. “Right now, I’m sleeping on somebody’s couch,” says Buddeke. “And I’ll be doing that all summer—moving around different friends’ houses.”

Buddeke has done five shows on Broadway, but she notes, “Every show I’ve gotten that had long runs on Broadway started here, in Chicago.” Her move to New York several years ago coincided with the end of a long-term relationship in Chicago. “I got stuck in New York,” says Buddeke. “I got stuck in this apartment that is costing me so much fucking money. The last two years I’ve been in Chicago more than New York.” (She appeared in both the Chicago and New York runs of Superior Donuts.)

Buddeke describes the trade-off as being between “the artistic side and the practical side. There is a lot more work in New York. Is it work that I want to do? No. I’ll do any work, but it’s not always work that makes me go, ‘Oh my God! I’m so happy!’”

Buddeke also works in regional theatres elsewhere—earlier this year, she was in Baltimore for Working It Out (a series of three one-acts, one of which was written by fellow American Blues member Rick Cleveland, and all of which were directed by former Next Theatre artistic director Jason Loewith) at Center Stage.

“Most regional theatres have housing [for out-of-town artists],” notes Buddeke. “You don’t get per diem, but you get housing.” Most regional venues will also pick up travel expenses and shipping for artists. “Most of them will let you bring your animal, which is good,” says Buddeke. (When we spoke, she was trying to figure out a way to get her cat from New York to Chicago for the summer.) Like Reed, Buddeke has found film work in New York. “I’ve done three or four independent movies and the usual Law and Order crap.”

As for perceptions of Chicago actors in New York, Buddeke says, “I was quoted in an article a long time ago about how New Yorkers think we have this brilliant acting gene up our butt if we’re from Chicago. I think they think that even more now, because of August and Ruined and Superior Donuts and Our Town. Those kinds of ensemble plays—they don’t get it in New York. They still have reverence for Chicago actors. I know it’s helped me a lot. People have a different take on me because I’m from Chicago theatre. I’m convinced of that. That’s why I tell every actor, ‘Go to New York.’”

But, cautions Buddeke, “Don’t even think about it if you don’t have an agent. I know so many good people who have gone there without an agent and then they come right back.” And though New Yorkers may have respect for Chicago actors, Buddeke says that producers “support the money, they support stars, and they support glitz.” That doesn’t mean it isn’t worth giving New York a shot, though. “Try it—and change it,” says Buddeke.

David Cromer has certainly been embraced by New York—for the past three years, he’s won the Lucille Lortel Award, honoring the best of off-Broadway, for his direction of Adding Machine (which began at Next Theatre and featured Joshua Schmidt’s score and Jason Loewith’s new adaptation from the Elmer Rice play), Our Town (which began with The Hypocrites ), and for Andrew Bovell’s When the Rain Stops Falling, which went up at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater in Lincoln Center.

Currently, Cromer’s production of A Streetcar Named Desire at Writers’ Theatre has been winning raves (including from this writer), and he is also working with Mary Arrchie Theatre on their ambitious staging of Cherrywood, originally created by Kirk Lynn of Austin’s Rude Mechanicals. The piece consists of a series of lines, unattributed on the page to characters, and it takes place at a party. The director and ensemble have a lot of freedom to determine who says what. Cromer’s production will stuff 49 actors on the tiny Angel Island stage. Then he goes back to New York to start rehearsals for the Broadway run of Yank!, David and Joseph Zellnik’s musical about two soldiers who fall in love during World War II.

Cromer had worked in New York (as well as other cities such as Houston) for many years while still living in Chicago—his 2005 off-Broadway production of Austin Pendleton’s Orson’s Shadow ran for several months.

“It was very hard after Adding Machine to come back,” says Cromer. “I was really enjoying New York as a place to be. I hadn’t enjoyed it before. Coming back to Chicago was hard. I love where I’m from. I wouldn’t have anything resembling whatever I’ve accomplished if I hadn’t had this. But it just felt like I didn’t live here anymore.”

Cromer, who is subletting an apartment from friends in Chicago for the summer, didn’t make the move officially until Our Town took off at the Barrow Street Theatre .

“I just realized I’d be in New York for most of 2009, so I got an apartment for a year. I like to have a base. I don’t like being on the road. And I realized, if I didn’t rent a place, I’d be in other people’s homes or a hotel.” Cromer also notes that his increasing comfort with the idea of living in New York coincided with getting jobs that actually paid enough to support him as a freelance director there.

But despite the fact that he is enjoying life as a New Yorker, Cromer says of Chicago, “I think we’re comfortable here because it IS comfortable here. What shocks New Yorkers is that you can live comfortably for very little [in Chicago]. The stakes are our personal best and our contribution as a whole. The consequences elsewhere are about your immediate fame and whether you knock the other guy off the hill. It made me really uncomfortable when I lived here to see that other people were buying into that.”

Cromer’s Broadway debut last fall with Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs only ran a week, despite generally positive notices for his work. One of the things that Cromer has been adjusting to in New York is the way that commercial theatre works.

“They have these targeted time frames for getting the rewrites done, and then getting the theatre. Not having an enormous commercial theatre scene [in Chicago], the idea that your schedule isn’t set is the craziest thing.”

As an example, Cromer mentions that Brighton Beach Memoirs, which ended up at the Nederlander, was originally going to be produced in Broadway’s Brooks Atkinson Theatre. “They told me that there was another show going up in the Atkinson, but it was only going to last a month.” That show turned out to be the hair-metal jukebox hit, Rock of Ages, which is still going strong.

By contrast, doing Cherrywood at Mary-Arrchie is “loose, it has freedom, they’re willing to go, ‘Fuck it, let’s do this and let’s do this.’” Cromer, known for his forthrightness, says, “There isn’t enough money in the world to make me go back into rehearsals for Brighton Beach Memoirs. It was a really difficult constipated process and I wouldn’t want to do it again.”

Cromer laughs when asked if he has any advice for other Chicago theatre artists making the move to New York, but then says, “Have less stuff. For real. That is really it. If you’re going to be mobile, be mobile. I’m 45 and I’ve got myself down to very little stuff.” As for future plans, Cromer says simply, “I want to work on something good that people will like. I would only be upset if people were offering me crap, and luckily they’re not doing that.”

For all the dislocations that living and working between different cities can provide for actors and directors, it’s nothing compared to what designers experience on the road. As a very-much-in-demand sound designer, Lindsay Jones could probably compose a sad song on a tiny violin for actors and directors who complain about traveling—if he could cram it into his already-insane schedule.

Jones, who, like Buddeke, is an American Blues Theater ensemble member, has called Los Angeles home since 2002—he lives there with his wife, writer and former Chicagoan Jamie Pachino, and their two children. But as anyone who follows his Facebook page knows, Jones, like George Clooney’s character in Up in the Air, seems to spend most of his time in terminals and planes flying all over the country for design gigs.

“Out of the eight years [he’s been in Los Angeles], only one of those years was actually BEING in L.A.,” says Jones. “The rest has been on the road.” He and Pachino decided to move to L.A. so she could pursue more screenwriting work. “I had reached the point where I could work anywhere,” he says.

But designers, unlike actors and directors, don’t have much time to sit down with a production. “I would kill for an actor’s schedule,” laughs Jones. Even by the standards of his peripatetic profession, Jones is exceptional. “Most designers I know do 15 or 20 shows a year.” Jones says he usually ends up doing 35-40. “I’ve slowly graduated from being a Chicago-based designer to an L.A.-based designer to ‘I don’t live anywhere.’ I’m like Beetlejuice—say my name three times and I appear.”

Aside from the obvious financial reasons, why keep such a crazy schedule? “I thrive off a certain amount of chaos in general,” says Jones. “That’s what keeps it fun.” His idea of relaxing? “In the second half of July, I have two days off,” says Jones.

Jones’ advice for anyone who works in theatre in multiple cities? “You want to get a good accountant, and you want to get a really patient accountant. I walk in with 20 different 1099s from 20 different states,” he says.

And when he finally does retire or at least slow down, Jones plans to write a book about travel. “I’ve become totally obsessed with the airline system and I’ve become very good at manipulating it,” he says.

Whether they have families or are single, maintain more than one residence or couch-surf, theatre artists who work between Chicago and other cities must eventually come to terms with one essential truth. “I think there are fundamentally things that actors and directors agree to give up,” says Cromer. “One of the big things we don’t like to admit to is impermanence. Someone once said to me, ‘We refuse to accept the fact that these jobs are only three months long.’ You’re not doing All My Children.”