Why working actors are anxious about paying their next bills too

Actress Kathleen Wise had just started dress rehearsals for a play she was directing at the Clark Studio Theater at Lincoln Center in New York City when she was given three hours to shut down the production and vacate the theater.

It was March 12 and Broadway went dark, joining Hollywood in a wholesale work stoppage in a bid to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus.

"I had a TV job that I was going to shoot the next day and two other acting gigs lined up," Wise said. "Within 48 hours, they were postponed indefinitely and the show at Lincoln Center was canceled."

Acting has always been a vocation with built-in financial insecurity. But, the coronavirus pandemic has hit the profession in unprecedented ways. Productions were halted in mid-March, seemingly overnight. Pilot season, the period between February to early May - when the networks create new shows, employing thousands