Making a Living in the Arts Rarely Follows a Straight Line

Making a living in the arts rarely follows a straight line, and David Cote’s path shows how resilience, community, and range can turn scattered steps into a coherent career. He began as an off-off Broadway actor in downtown New York, embracing experimental work that paid in experience rather than cash. When he noticed a gap in coverage for that scene, he launched a DIY zine that profiled artists, ran manifestos, and built a micro-ecosystem of readers and makers. That small, gritty publication became a bridge to professional criticism at Time Out New York, where he spent years reviewing theater across the city, refining a muscular, engaging voice. Those pages doubled as paid practice: the tight deadlines, word counts, and constant exposure to new work sharpened his dramatic instincts and planted seeds for writing plays and libretti.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme. Cote draws a clear line between financial stability and creative stamina, arguing that the healthiest career blends both without burning out. Opera and theater can take five to ten years to reach the stage, which means writers must manage energy as much as ambition. He recommends embracing the hyphen—playwright-teacher, librettist-editor, critic-collaborator—so income and identity do not hinge on a single bet. He’s candid about the economics: few librettists live on commissions alone, and many playwrights treat well-received productions as pathways to TV rooms or institutional roles. For him, sustainability means consistent practice, trusted collaborators, and projects at different phases, so momentum never stalls while one piece winds through development.

Collaboration sits at the core of his method. With opera, language becomes lean, lyrical, and suggestive, leaving space for the composer to expand emotion and structure. A line that reads plain on the page can bloom into something seismic in music. With plays, he leans into character, causality, and story pressure, building scenes from voices that demand to speak. Across both forms, early shares with trusted readers and dramaturgs keep drafts honest and moving. He points to projects like Blind Injustice and the seed of a Paul Robeson opera as examples of how relationships spark new work: a conversation after a performance, a shared fascination, and a willingness to start before the full roadmap appears.

Cote also reflects on media ecosystems and discovery. He values curated listings and local guides—the zines and alt-weeklies that once stitched scenes together—and worries about the noise and fatigue of algorithmic feeds. Yet the DIY impulse persists: artists still gather, publish, and recommend, even if the formats shift. That urge to make and to share, he argues, is entrepreneurial at its root. Entrepreneurship here is not a fetish for scaling; it’s the practical art of getting work in front of people—assembling collaborators, navigating institutions, hustling for commissions, and choosing freedom when money tempts shortcuts. If there’s a takeaway, it’s this: build the community you need, pace your ambition, and keep multiple fires lit. The long game rewards steady heat more than sporadic blaze.