2 top local actors share commitment to their craft
Since their teens, Marcy Savastano and Allan O’Grady Cuseo have carved out distinct niches in Rochester’s theaters.
Savastano is a rising star capable of tackling the most challenging roles. Cuseo has made himself a seasoned king of comedy after 55 years on area stages.
Savastano represents a rare breed: a community actress who also does Hollywood roles and commercials. Since 2002, she has played in 14 movies — well, 15 if you include her cameo appearance as a corpse in Header (2006). She also has tanked up her credentials by doing Kwik Fill ads.
And she is associate director for Method Machine, a 3-year-old group that stages cutting-edge dramas. Last spring, she won kudos for her wrenching portrayal of Sylvia Plath at MuCCC. Paul Alexander’s drama Edge shows the anguished 30-year-old poet’s final day. “It was incredibly rewarding and draining,” says Savastano, a Greece native.
“I took much-needed breaks between shows.”
She recently played a young wife in After, a movie shot largely in the Browncroft neighborhood by local producer Richard Angel. Tentatively scheduled for release next year, it stars Kathleen Quinlan.
Such parts only came her way after long training.
“I’ve danced since I was 3,” she says. “My family was always putting on little plays.”
After studying theater arts at Nazareth College, she acted with area troupes but decided that she’d like to eat regularly. She moonlighted as a waitress, then gave workshops at Geva Theatre Center. Lately, she has been considering a change of scenery.
“A friend in L.A. keeps trying to get me out there,” she says. “Maybe I’ll see if I can find good roles. But I’ll always use Rochester as my home base.”
Cuseo can identify with Savastano’s long climb up.
This 69-year-old Rochester resident has starred in comedies with every local troupe. But he began at age 14 by playing Conceit in the morality play Everyman.
“I didn’t understand a word I was saying,” he admits. “But I got hooked on acting.”
The production took place in a church basement, where he prayed to St. Genesius of Rome before each show. He still feels that many troubled actors could use a patron saint.
“I’ve heard it said that actors are the loneliest people in the world,” he says. “They find an instant family in the cast and audience.
“Many of them also have problems with self-esteem. If they can become someone else onstage and get recognition, it’s an affirmation.”
During the 1960s, he acted off-Broadway and worked marionettes at Macy’s Christmas show. As his résumé grew fatter, he kept losing weight. “I worked as a temp and ate tuna out of a can,” he says. “It all ended with a phone call in 1969.”
The call was from a Greece school administrator who remembered that Cuseo had earned a degree in library science. Would he consider a job as school librarian?
“I thought about it for about a second,” says Cuseo. “Then I said, ‘OK!’ And I enjoyed being a librarian until I retired last June.”
He also found time to star in hundreds of local plays, attracting a loyal canine following for his portrayal of Yippy the dog in the comedy Greater Tuna. It was a natural role for him, because he believes that conscientious actors lead a dog’s life.
“Many times I gave up parties, relationships, everything for the theater,” he says. “You have to be passionate about it.”
