{alltv} Stay Tuned for Soap Stars' Next Acts

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IF people at the Knitting Factory recognized Jake Silbermann's cornflower-blue eyes last month, they were too cool to let on. The handsome Mr. Silbermann, looking considerably more pulled together in a sport coat and sweater combo than most of the 20-somethings attending the Royal Flush film festival at this Brooklyn club, took questions from the small audience following a screening of his short film "Stuffer."

The word "Nuke" was not uttered once.

At 27 and just three years after quitting his telesales job to join the cast of the soap opera "As the World Turns," Mr. Silbermann is known to millions (maybe not you, but millions nonetheless) as Noah Mayer. Paired with the equally photogenic Van Hansis, who played Luke Snyder, he was half of daytime television's first same-sex super couple and the last in a long line of the show's duos honored with one of those conjoined nicknames favored by adoring fans. Noah. Luke. Nuke.

Now Mr. Silbermann is out of a job, or at least the steady soap opera work that only a few of his former cast mates can currently lay claim to. On Sept. 17, after 54 years of backstabbing, bitchery and tune-in-tomorrows, "As the World Turns" followed its sister soap "Guiding Light" into an ever-expanding universe of defunct daytime melodrama. In 1990 an average daily soap viewership of 6.5 million could choose among 12 network serials. Today, according to a recent report in Advertising Age, average viewership hovers well below 1.5 million, with six soaps left on the air. When production at the "As the World Turns" studio in Brooklyn halted in June, New York was left with only one soap — "One Life to Live," on ABC — and hundreds of actors plotting their next real-life story lines.

"It's the loss of a creative environment as much as a loss of paychecks," said Trent Dawson, whose hapless, occasionally cross-dressing Henry Coleman gave "As the World Turns" some comic relief and the actor a schedule that allowed him to moonlight at the Baltimore Centerstage theater. Mr. Dawson, 39, is currently appearing in Vaclav Havel's "Memorandum" at the Beckett Theater, Off Broadway.

Since 1949, when the DuMont network first broadcast the 15-minute daytime serial "A Woman to Remember" from the small basement studio of Wanamaker's department store in Manhattan, generations of New York actors found in soaps a combination of training, money and camaraderie that isn't likely to be replaced. In addition to dozens of regular cast members, "As the World Turns" hired as many as 50 extras and day players per week, said Christopher Goutman, the last executive producer of the show.

New York, he said, "will have a lot more actors waiting tables."

Mr. Goutman, a former actor, can reel off the roster of soaps that helped him pay rent in late-1970s New York. Except for "All My Children," which now tapes in Los Angeles, and "One Life to Live," Mr. Goutman's lineup exists only in memory: "Love of Life," "Search for Tomorrow," "As the World Turns," "Guiding Light," "Ryan's Hope," "For Richer, For Poorer," "Another World" and "Texas." The once-thriving industry has been all but decimated by declining viewership and the cheaper production costs of alternative fare like "The Talk," a knock-off of "The View" that replaced "As the World Turns."

In interviews with actors who brought life to the soap's fictional Oakdale, few said they were caught off guard by the show's demise. Mr. Silbermann said he sensed a certain end-time mood almost immediately after joining the show in 2007. Veteran cast members, he recalled, "would say, 'Oh, man, if only you were here years ago, when location shoots meant going to Rome instead of Staten Island.' You know, too bad."

Two years later Mr. Silbermann began writing a short film script about a drug-smuggling American soldier returning from Iraq. He gave himself a secondary (but juicy) role as a tattooed, slightly demented drug connection. "I knew at the very least it would improve my reel," Mr. Silbermann said.

With more than $50,000 raised through the online fund-raising site Kickstarter (and the loyalty of generous Nuke fans) Mr. Silbermann and the director, Nathan Crooker, shot "Stuffer" over four days last summer. The film, which Mr. Silbermann hopes to expand to feature length, won the jury prize for best short film at the Royal Flush Festival last month.

"I am, in a word, encouraged," Mr. Silbermann said.

He faces daunting odds. For every Julianne Moore, Marisa Tomei, Alec Baldwin or Josh Duhamel who make the leap from soaps to film careers, thousands either never made it or were unmoved to try. "God love Jake for having the ambition to do this," Mr. Goutman said. "But do you know how many thousands and thousands and thousands of short films are made each year?" The goal — and not-insignificant challenge — Mr. Goutman said, is simply to keep working.

"You go from making basically $400 an hour to $400 a week," said Michael Park, 42, the "As the World Turns" star who won a 2010 Daytime Emmy Award for his portrayal of the good-guy cop Jack Snyder, "and you pray that there's something else down the line." Mr. Park is now appearing Off Broadway in "Middletown" at the Vineyard Theater, in his third stage production since the soap ended.

So far three of Mr. Park's former colleagues (Maura West, Daniel Cosgrove and Terri Colombino) have found full-time soap work, and of those only Ms. Colombino has managed to stay in New York. (She begins on "One Life to Live" on Nov. 29.) She said she took a pay cut in her move from the fictional burgs of Oakdale to Llanview.

Five months after "As the World Turns" went dark its actors are walking a variety of paths. In addition to submitting "Stuffer" to various film festivals, Mr. Silbermann is auditioning for television and film roles. Mr. Park and Mr. Dawson, also auditioning for television, have returned to the stage work they never completely gave up. Billy Magnussen, who earned praise last summer in an otherwise neagtive review in The New York Times of Joel Schumacher's "Twelve," is in Atlanta filming "The Lost Valentine," a forthcoming "Hallmark Hall of Fame" TV movie with Jennifer Love Hewitt and Betty White. Both Eileen Fulton and the song-and-dance trained Colleen Zenk have begun work on one-woman shows designed to display their musical talents.

By early fall at least five of the top stars from "As the World Turns" had either moved to or taken jobs in Los Angeles, including Mr. Hansis; real-life husband and wife Jon Hensley and Kelly Menighan-Hensley; Ms. West (who joined "The Young and the Restless"); and Mr. Cosgrove (recently signed to "All My Children").

"I just kind of felt like if you want to get work, go where the work is," said Mr. Hansis, a three-time Daytime Emmy nominee with a starring role in the coming horror film "Occupant." He hired a West Coast agent to focus on prime-time auditions. "That being said, if a soap contract were offered to me, I might have a completely different story. It's a great job."

Certainly the lure of soaps — dwindling audiences and precarious futures notwithstanding — is more than some actors can or want to resist.

"It's called golden handcuffs for a reason," said Ms. Colombino, whose Katie Peretti was perhaps the most popular young heroine on "As the World Turns" in the show's last decade. A single mother of a daughter in kindergarten, Ms. Colombino said a soap career is well suited for family life. "Just because I don't become the next big movie star, the next Julianne Moore, that's just not important to me anymore," she said. "I love what I do, but it doesn't consume my entire life."

Perhaps no one has lived the life of a New York soap star with more panache and notoriety than Eileen Fulton. The woman credited with inventing the soap industry's contractual "granny clause" in the late 1960s (no grandchildren for her character) is working with the cabaret coach and director Diana Basmajian to create the nightclub act she'll unveil at the Greenwich Village piano bar Don't Tell Mama on Dec. 17.

In an apartment on the Upper East Side whose walls are painted a dramatic shade of purple, Ms. Fulton recently quieted two Pekingese dogs — Ella Fitzgerald and Rosemary Clooney — as she practiced the showbiz yarns that might make it into her cabaret act. At 77, and waving off concern over the pneumonia that landed her in the hospital just as the final episodes of "As the World Turns" were broadcast, Ms. Fulton dismissed talk of retirement with a succinct "You die."

"Just show me the script," Ms. Fulton said. "I'll travel." She'd even consider another soap role, though nothing permanent. "I want to do movies too. Character parts. I've got all kinds of wigs."