What happens when actors stop waiting for the industry to give them permission to be creative?

Actors spend so much of their careers waiting: waiting for the audition, the callback, the offer, the next opportunity to actually do the thing we trained to do. But casting gets to decide when we get hired — it doesn't get to decide when we get to be artists.

In this episode of The Working Actor NYC Podcast, Benjamin Howes and Patrick Richwood explore what it means to take radical ownership of your creative life — and why “creating your own work” is only one small part of that.

🎨 Creativity as play
💡 Creativity as expression
🛠️ Creativity as practice
✍️ Creativity as authorship
🚀 Creativity as career strategy

From acting and writing to making content, cooking, painting, building things — does it matter what you're creating if you're exercising your imagination?

And perhaps the bigger question: Have actors given the industry too much power over when we're allowed to feel like artists?