Simon Anthony Abou-Fadel is a multi-hyphenate arts administrator. He is an actor and the Co-Executive Director and Managing Director of Youtheatre, one of Quebec’s most innovative theatres for young audiences. He has worked in finance at major corporations, including American Express Financial Advisors, as the SAG Foundation LifeRaft Program Director, where he produced and taught weekly Business of Acting professional development programs to Screen Actors Guild members, and has served on the Senior Management Team at The Actors’ Fund of America, where he effected the adoption of groundbreaking health access options for underemployed and uninsured entertainment industry professionals.
He earned his Bachelor of Business Administration in Finance from the University of Houston, a Master of Fine Arts from Western Illinois University, and a Financial Management certificate (PFP) from the University of California, Los Angeles-Extension.
Are you an artist? And if not, how did you come into arts administration?
Yes, I am an artist. I fell in love with acting in business school in Texas. In eighth grade, I took a local on-camera class in Houston, where we were living at the time, and really enjoyed it. I didn’t do much with it, though; I was playing competitive soccer for Klein High School, and that was pretty intense.
In undergrad, I took an elective acting class, Acting 101, while I was studying finance. I like to joke that people say they get bitten by the acting bug, and I say I was swallowed whole on that first performance in the Blackbox theater in front of the class. I was hooked. I thought to myself, ‘I need to do this for the rest of my life, one way or the other.’
And that’s pretty much what I’ve done today. I continued taking acting classes through college and almost had a double major in theater and finance. Afterward, I went off to get my Master’s degree in acting on scholarship at Western Illinois University. I then got a contract at the Minneapolis Children’s Theatre Company as a performing apprentice upon graduation from my Master’s degree in acting. I thought, ‘Wow, a one-year contract as an actor—that’s huge.’
So, I moved to Minneapolis for that performing apprentice contract. And that’s when I started to learn how absolutely brutal the arts could be. You know, everything your parents say about why you don’t want to go into the arts, I was experiencing it. My mom would send me $50 a month just to help me to get groceries. And my girlfriend at the time, who is now my wife, was also pitching in everywhere she could.
Eventually, I thought, ‘Listen, you have a finance degree, use it.’ I put it to work and became a licensed investment advisor, with securities series 7, 65, and Life/Health licenses, at American Express, to hopefully pay off my student loans and earn some financial independence. The firm was excellent, and they really wanted to retain me, but the work was all-consuming. I felt like I wasn’t really fully balanced as who I wanted to be; I didn’t have any time for acting whatsoever. So I resigned and went back to acting. I moved to Los Angeles—to Hollywood—and tried it again. I quickly realized, within the first year, that was even more brutal.
I went back to wealth management in Hollywood with a boutique firm that handled high-net-worth entertainment industry clients. I specialized in employee benefits and quickly was asked to join the investment advisor division. I did that for almost a year and then thought again, ‘Man, I’m way out of balance again.’ Luckily, my wife found a posting for a non-profit organization that was helping all of Hollywood’s artists find health insurance or affordable access to care. I didn’t even know there was a sector called nonprofit. That’s when I made the segue into senior nonprofit arts management. I still had some room in my life to continue to act, and that’s what I did. I worked there for three years and became a company member of The Actors’ Gang theater in Los Angeles, whose artistic director is the Academy Award-winning film actor Tim Robbins. My wife and I both acted with that company for many years and very much enjoyed the work and the community we found there.
I then transitioned during that time to the Screen Actors Guild Foundation, where I ran a professional Business of Acting professional development program for SAG actors to help with all aspects of their careers, for everything but the talent part. So, for example, how to negotiate contracts, how to audition, getting an agent, assembling actor reels, producing your own works, negotiating contracts, and so on. I kept acting while I was doing that, as well. So I simultaneously was able—once I got into nonprofit artist management—to excel in that sideline career as well as launch a professional acting career in film, television, and theater.
So how did you find your way to Montréal?
That’s a great question. I met my wife in Minneapolis when I moved from Western Illinois. Her father’s from there, but she was actually born and raised in Montréal and the Eastern Townships of Québec. Her mother’s from Québec. The whole plan was to then go to New York or California. We chose California because I was born there, I had family there, and we liked the sun, the space, and the beaches.
It was going to be just a five-year stint, but it ended up being 10. It took me the first five years to pay off student loans and get accustomed to the camera and the industry overall. (Note to artists: stay out of debt if you can, keep expenses as low as possible, and save, save, save as much as you can for slow times). We said we’d stay only if our careers really blew up, and it made sense to stay. There were a bunch of close calls for sure, but that’s the nature of the industry. We didn’t necessarily “blow up” to where it made sense to stay in Los Angeles. So the plan then became coming back to Montréal, and it was just the right time because by then we were raising two kids, and my wife’s father was battling serious health issues, so it was good to be close.
I’m curious, something that came up from time to time when I worked in arts advocacy was the sort of invisible divide between the for-profit arts industry and the nonprofit arts industry, and whether we should all be talking about ourselves as two parts of a whole. Knowing that you have experience in Hollywood and in the nonprofit theatrical world, do you feel that tension, or are they just two completely different things?
No, I feel that tension. I think that’s a great way to put it. Hollywood is obviously driven by box office revenues. I think there’s a similarity in that nonprofit theaters and arts organizations also need box office revenues, but are often sustained by donation revenues or trying to find models of sustainability, which implies recurring revenues. Both structures thrive if there is consistent recurring revenue coming in. From the nonprofit theater perspective, it’s a lot about box office receipts and grants. In Canada, those are given as core grants, recurring revenues, and then private donations, and some box office sales.
I think there is a divide, but it’s not uncrossable. Look at organizations like Soulpepper Theatre in Toronto; they found a way to turn Kim’s Convenience, which started as a stage play, into a television show that was well-received.
The theater is often recognized as where performers, directors, and writers can build their chops and work on pieces that really challenge them. Those skills, if cleverly managed, can often be transferred to Netflix productions and find wider audiences through digital distribution or movies. It can be tough, but I know writers who write for both. A Canadian writer named Hannah Moscovitch—we produced one of her early works. We made digital productions of one of her works with Télé-Québec that was nominated for three French-Canadian Academy Awards. Now, Hugh Jackman picked up one of her scripts for Broadway, and she has another script being made into a movie with Sandra Oh. There you have a writer who started in theater and transferred those skills because they are largely transferable; it just takes some tweaking.
I’ve been executive producing digital works with Télé-Québec for three different works that were all nominated for awards. I learned a lot as an executive producer for digital distribution. I bet I could transfer those skills to a platform like Netflix. It’s all doable; it’s just a matter of investing in the skill and having the right outlook to enhance those skills and apply them in a different arena.
Simon at TIFF Lightbox in Toronto. Photo: Teneisha Collins.
That’s incredible.
One of the big things I learned in Hollywood as an artist and a business person is that the term “hybrid” used to be a dirty word. It used to be that if you’re an artist, you’ve got to be starving and live out of your car if you need to. In my old jobs, we had social support services where we helped artists pay for groceries. We had some big names who were living out of a car and motels before they won the Academy Award, and the money finally followed.
I remember a conversation with an actress who was unknown at the time but was nominated for an Academy Award. I asked her how things were going, and she said, “I thought I was just working on an indie film for a hundred dollars a day. I had no idea it was going to become anything.” She was nominated for Best Lead Actress, and she said, “It’s unbelievable, but the money hasn’t come yet. I’m still trying to make my bills.” That illuminated the nature of the industry for me. Even Academy Award-nominated director Brady Corbet (The Brutalist) recently spoke about how he and many fellow Oscar-nominated filmmakers still struggle financially and have “zero income” from their films. He even said some “can’t pay their rent.”
The idea that you had to give it all for your art is one way, but there is another valid pathway: being what they called a “hybrid”—producer/actor, actor/writer. You can do a couple of things well enough to sustain yourself. The number one reason artists have to leave the industry is financial.
I’ve read that you have done advocacy work in healthcare for artists. Tell me a little bit about that.
Sure. There was that time when I was really getting burned out very quickly in wealth management. I liked to joke that the firms always wanted to promote me—I was good at the job—but I always wanted to jump out the window or quit. Thankfully, I resigned when that job at The Actors Fund came up. I got involved with helping my own navigate healthcare in the United States.
Because I did wealth management and employee benefits, I got good at insurance and small group insurance policies. A wonderful woman named Connie Reil taught me a lot about insurance. My boss at The Actors’ Fund of America in New York said I was the perfect candidate because I knew the artist’s life, and I knew insurance inside out. In that position, we were trying to change legislation, leveraging the Health Insurance Resource Center we offered nationally. We wanted to change legislation so that when Equity actors on Broadway fell out of union coverage, they could afford COBRA. Not many people, including actors, can afford the increase in premiums, so we wanted to raise awareness and collect statistics.
I worked with The Commonwealth Fund in Manhattan and Dr. Rick Brown at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research in Los Angeles to assemble a survey to collect credible data. Jim Brown got in touch with Jerry Stiller (Ben Stiller’s dad), who helped advocate, and New York passed a COBRA subsidy plan for artists. I mirrored similar efforts in Los Angeles by getting together with the Grammy Foundation (MusiCares) and the television actors’ union (AFTRA at the time). We worked with Dr. Marc Brodsky at the UCLA Center for East-West Medicine and established a clinic that would see artists for free if they were uninsured.
It was very fulfilling work because it helped the population close to my heart. I also held a monthly health insurance resource workshop at the Screen Actors Guild on Wilshire Boulevard. We would fill up the James Cagney room every month to educate artists on what their options were. At the time, there was a special plan with Blue Cross where you didn’t have to go through medical underwriting every time you moved between union and individual plans. This meant if your health had changed adversely, then you wouldn’t lose access to individual coverage so long as you only came and went from your union health plan. This was huge. I also taught them about an Assembly Bill at the time, which allowed small businesses of two or more people to get guaranteed issue coverage. If you were savvy and started a little LLC, you could get insurance without medical underwriting. That empowered artists to take ownership of their lives.
These services seem extremely valuable. To circle back to what you touched on earlier about being a hyphenate professional, if you are solely dedicated to being an artist, you probably don’t have a background in navigating paperwork and insurance. You need help.
Exactly. It puts you in an infinitely more powerful position if you know both worlds. It builds character, too. A skilled and educated artist is more powerful than an artist who is not ready to be autonomous.
Youtheatre team: Simon, Véa Bossé and Jeremy Segal. Photo: Elizabeth Delage.
So, all of these experiences are leading up to what you do now with Youtheatre. You’ve worked with artists and in wealth and healthcare, you’ve been, and continue to work as an actor yourself, and now you’re developing future talent.
My acting fuels my arts administration, and my arts administration fuels my acting. It’s a symbiotic relationship.
At Youtheatre, we cast professional union actors who are all over the age of 18. They are early in their careers. It’s really great to work with them. My favorite thing to do is create art, and my second favorite thing is to pay artists. At Youtheatre, we make sure they are properly contracted and paid. The artistic directors I work with, Jeremy Segal and Véa Bossé, are geniuses. They work in the rehearsal room right behind my office. I can hear the creation process through the wall while I’m doing administration, raising money, and doing contracts. It gives the administration an extra dynamic that makes it all worth it.
We are an English-language minority theater in Québec. We usually start shows in English and transfer them to French as demand comes. I’ve found Montréal to be one of the coolest, most beautiful cities in North America. With the bilingual culture and support for the arts, it is just gorgeous. I love Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and Austin, too, but Montréal has something unseen anywhere else in North America. Where else can you speak two languages and have so much art and culture with really genuine, kind people?
Can you share one thing, personal or professional, from the past year that you’re really proud of?
I’m really proud of the work we’ve accomplished at Youtheatre. We transitioned the organization into a hybrid digital and live stage theater company and raised its visibility. I’m also proud of the acting roles I’ve been able to earn lately. Especially my recent role in the movie Witchboard, which is featured at the beginning of my actor reel. It was directed by Chuck Russell (The Mask) and stars Jamie Campbell Bower from Stranger Things and Madison Iseman from the Jumanji franchise.
Also, a friend and I created a lighting technology that gives you studio-quality movie lighting at the push of a button for Zoom calls or video content creation. We’ve patented it, we’re raising money, and we have prototypes. It merges my interests in business and movies.
That’s very cool. Is there anything that I didn’t ask you that you would have wanted to talk about?
The last thing I’ll tell you is I’ll never forget the moment I learned not to take the ups and downs of the entertainment industry personally. When I was assisting Hollywood artists with finding health insurance and access to care, I called the head of the Screen Actors Guild pension and health plan, Bruce Dow, to quantify how many artists qualify for union insurance. He sent a spreadsheet of the 120,000 members. To get the best plan, you had to earn more than $30,000 a year at the time. Only five percent of members earned that much. To get the second-best plan, you had to earn more than $15,000 a year. Only seven percent of members earned that much. That means that only twelve percent qualified for any health insurance at all. The industry has an 88 percent underemployment or unemployment rate, and Bruce said that percentage never really changed over the decades.
That vantage point helped me realize “It’s not you; it’s the industry.” As artists, it’s easy to take things personally because of our training, but getting an objective view from the business side is invaluable. There’s a reason they call it show business—both words are equally important.
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*Simon Anthony Abou-Fadel’s headshot credit: Elizabeth Delage.