We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jeffrey Nicholas Brown a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Jeffrey Nicholas, appreciate you joining us today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

I have ben able to earn a living either by acting or by drumming soon after college, but it wasn’t before I learned some valuable lessons. I have been very lucky, and I also did something that really helps in a risky situation. Diversify my income streams. I’ll never forget right after I graduated from The Theatre School at De Paul university, I had a job interview to be a driver delivering greens to restaurants all over the city. I did my first day of training and I realized quite quickly that if I got an audition or opportunity to act or drum, this job would prevent me from that. I learned that flexibility in my day job was the most important thing. I had to keep my eyes on the prize. I couldn’t lock myself down and p[ut myself in a situation where I can’t do what I love. But how do you do that?!?! Well, you do lots of jobs. So when one is down – the other is up. I then got a job tele fundraising where I could make my own hours. I started getting jobs as a juggler. I started to teach drums. What I didn’t expect was that I met other artists in a similar position as me. That added to network and gave me more connections. A sign I was on the right path. Then, when I got hired by Blue Man Group a year later, I really got to make a living by drumming and acting at the same time. But if I hadn’t turned down that first job, who knows if I would have made it into Blue Man Group?! I wouldn’t have had the time to practice drums and do plays until my opportunity arrived. You have to stay nimble, and you have to keep training all the time. Making money cannot get in the ay of that.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I tend to end up where music and comedy meet. I got into acting at a very young age. As long as. I can remember I wanted to be an actor. All never heard from adults was ” well that’s a hard road”. So I started training as soon as I could. I begged my parents for acting classes. All I knew was I needed to train my body and my voice so I took some dance classes as well and even joined a prestigious boys choir for a while until high school when I could finally get into some plays. I started trying at The Second City then as well. In the meantime, my parents forced me to play an instrument and I chose the drums – which I am forever grateful for. Today I am a character actor, drummer, and Blue Man in Blue Man group. I am able to stitch together a pretty good living doing all of these things. I’m most proud of my ability to switch back and for between film and TV, and music. These past few years with the SAG strike and all the tumult after – music (and Blue Man Group) have been a life saver.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

The only resources I wish I knew about were ones that didn’t exist when I was coming up. Today, if you want to be an actor, you have infinity more accessibility to produce your own thing. You can write, shoot, and publish your own stuff AND distribute it. Starting off you need to be DOING IT. Any way that you can. Be that in a class, in a play, or just shooting stuff with friends. You can’t get gold at something without putting on the time. So often, people thinking acting doesn’t need to be practiced. But it’s a skill and craft like anything else.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

My goal is to create and star in a series. This is my main drive. When ever I don’t have auditions or music gigs, this is what I come back to. I’m always writing something to get better as a writer or taking a class to get better as an actor. I’m always trying to find time for my “dream project”. I know other things may pop up along the way – and I may never get there. But that goal has always kept me focused and active in the face of adversity. It’s important to have that overall drive to stay focused. And I believe that chasing a dream helps attract other gigs too me too.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.jeffreynicholasbrown.com
• Instagram: @jeffreynicholasbrown
• Facebook: @jeffreynicholasbrown

Image Credits

Scott Tuchman