We were lucky to catch up with Sylvia Crim & Chelsea Bryan recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Sylvia & Chelsea, thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about the best boss, mentor, or leader you’ve ever worked with.

We chose this prompt because we are our own and each other’s bosses! Haha. We co-own a business together and happen to be best friends! We are very fortunate to be a great match as partners. However, it’s not all luck and compatibility. We both have extremely strong work ethic and are almost too good at communicating. Sometimes, we have to block out an extra hour before our work meetings just so we get our daily friend-catch up time! Something really great about our dynamic as co-owners is that our strengths and weakness compliment each other. Where one of us lacks in a skill set, the other thrives.

It has been 2 year since we opened The Actor’s Apothecary and we are just now getting the hang of work/life balance. We wouldn’t have made it to where we are with out pushing and supporting each other in our career goals as well as our personal needs. We can each think of a particular moment we knew we were in safe hands with one another as business partners. This made us tear up. Thank you so much for asking!

Sylvia Crim &, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

The Actor’s Apothecary is a one-stop shop for creatives in New Orleans. Sylvia and Chelsea, the founders, are both working film and television actors/producers. We tape actors for their film/television/theatre auditions as well as coach beginner to advanced actors in a class setting or one on one session.

Other services we provide to actors are;
Demo Reel Editing, Footage acquisition (from all networks), Career Consultation, and Online Actor Database Training.
We also bring in teachers to offer a variety of acting classes to all levels.

The Actor’s Apothecary is equipt with a digital 4k camera in a sound proof taping room that can be used for voice-over/podcast work.

The studio space and black box theatre seats 47 people and can be rented as theatre space to anyone. We rent out the theatre to other companies or individuals who want to rehearse for their projects or put on a show. The theatre also has a short throw 4k projector and has been used many times for intimate screenings and film premieres. 2024 will be our second year partnering with the New Orleans Film Festival and we feel really cool saying that.

We have also produce a number of original shows ourselves and think these are the events that bring us the most joy. Among many we have a monthly Cold Reading Series where we feature local scripts to be performed as an elevated stage reading. The unique part is, the chosen actors are “cast” just ONE hour before the show goes up-script in hand. It is open to the public and a great way to network as well as being beneficial for the writer to hear their work read out loud. Of course we also love and cherish any opportunity we ourselves get to be on stage :)

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

GRANTS!!! Quick and easy answer. There are so many grants out there for small business owners, and the more unique you are the better. All you have to do is make the effort to APPLY. This will come in handy when business and income is slow and you are working yourself ragged to bring in magical revenue.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

The majority of 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA were on strike. This effected The Actor’s Apothecary tremendously because we rely heavily on taping and coaching sales.

We (Sylvia and Chelsea) busted our butts so hard to keep this place open, relevant and affordable to the community. We produce classes, shows, workshops, you name it.

We lived off breadcrumbs and have a head full of greys but we survived and are now KICKING heinys instead!!

Contact Info:

• Website: theactorsapothecary.com
• Instagram: @theactorsapothecary
• Facebook: The Actor’s Apothecary
• Other: Vimeo: The Actor’s Apothecary