Ben Guralnik, graduated Adelphi in 2009 and I had the honor to talk with him about his career at Adelphi. Ben not only was a student here for the recently built PAC but was here for the renovation of the PAC and the pre-PAC days. In this short essay written by Ben himself, he touches upon his beginning here at Adelphi, the renovation era, the post renovation and the present, which is about how life is in the acting world after graduation.
When I first started attending classes at Adelphi as an acting major, things were pretty good, as we had the very nice Olmsted Theatre, and we were even promised that we would get to do our freshman workshop in there. Luckily, for our entire freshman year, all of the mainstage shows (including both Dance Adelphi’s’) were performed in the 300+ seat historic Olmsted. I had learned to love all of my teachers and fellow acting majors and we were told there might be an even bigger facility built for all of us performing arts majors, so, honestly, life was pretty good for us.
Then, towards the end of my freshman year, we were told that we were going to be using grungy old, fried food smelling Post Hall for all of our classes and even some performances. They also mentioned some high school over a mile away called Herricks for bigger mainstage shows, such as Midsummer Night’s Dream, Urinetown and Our Town. For TWO ENTIRE Years! This was not what I was hoping college was going to be like at all. Well, we all complained and made the trek over to Herricks everyday for rehearsals and shows and we all just got used to it.
My senior year rolled around, and on my first day of class, I realized that all of that complaining and commuting had finally paid off, because all of the Performing arts majors (Dance, Theatre, Tech and Music) had a new Home…… The PAC! Even though I only got to use this gorgeous state of the art-art facility, with over 6 performance spaces for a year, it was an honor to be an Adelphi student, as well as a theatre major. Luckily my last show (Stage Door), ended up being on the exact same stage as my first show (Freshman Workshop), so it was a nice way to end off right where I started. The two years in between were not really as bad as everyone made them out to be, and most importantly FLEW BY. Actually all 4 years flew by.
Here I am, just a few blinks later, an actor, living the dream in New York City, one year after graduation, and NO, I have not gotten my big break yet, but I have gotten a few parts in theatre here and there, in shows in Manhattan and Brooklyn, and it hasn’t been easy (but who said it was going to be easy?). I have yet to get a real steady paying job (most likely waiting tables, as most actors do). Graduating in the year that I did, was not the greatest timing, economy wise, and I have heard from a lot of friends in the class of ’09 that finding a job is not real easy these days. But, I’m going to be persistent, and keep pushing, knowing that I have a BFA from the wonderful acting program at Adelphi University, and I know that all that suffering at Herrick’s and in Post paid off, and that has trained me to just be patient and optimistic. My time will come.
