As a professional actress, Idea Kit coach Betsy Mugavero is very practiced at channeling all sorts of emotions. But the scariest time of her life offstage came during the pandemic. She was running her own theater company in Arizona when COVID shut down her world. “The pandemic did a total number on my career.”
With no work on the horizon, a 3-year-old, and a baby on the way, Betsy and her husband packed up and moved to Pennsylvania to live with family. The months there, with no acting work, left her questioning all her life choices.
“We did not see any light at the end of the tunnel,” remembers Betsy. “I was like how am I going to literally feed these children?”
She can smile now, thinking back on the journey that led from the southwest, to the east coast, and eventually back to the stage in Seattle [check out Betsy in the trailer for “Dial M for Murder”]. From it all she’s come to realize that, “The most engaging parts of the memoir to read are the hardest to live.”
From Stage to Screen
Bitten by the acting bug at age 16, Betsy worked in community theater, went to college for theater, and then got her Master’s in Fine Arts. She teaches the skills she’s learned through the years to theater students at the University of Washington … and to Idea Decanter’s clients who are often stepping in front of the camera for the first time.
“Idea Kit coaching is just as much fun to me as teaching people Shakespeare,” Betsy proclaims. And she’s very familiar with Shakespeare. Three stints as Juliet are among her accolades, but perhaps her most memorable show was the bard’s “As You Like It.” She met a guy in the production, and started what she thought was a “show-mance.” He turned out to be husband material.
From Stage to Screen
Every day Betsy coaches advisors who are nervous about being on camera or are worried about how they look. Her advice to them: Get out of your head and into your body.
“It’s really fun to watch someone who is nervous, be given just a couple of technical notes and physical adjustments and watch them completely change into someone who is more confident and delivers a better performance.”
She believes the most memorable performances from advisors come when they share personal stories. “Just today I did a performance coaching session with someone who was practicing a script in which talked about being a single dad and raising his daughters. I was like, ‘That’s it! That’s the moment the audience will lean in and want to learn more.’”
At Home with the Actress
Never hesitant to share a personal story of her own (she loves the color yellow, Mariah Carey, and she hates cilantro), Betsy will launch into tales about her two kids. Ramona is four and is Betsy’s biggest fan. She’s cultivating her parents’ love of acting, roaming the house creating “weirdo” characters to entertain them all. Her 8-year-old son, August, is seriously into hockey and has his eye on the NHL. She loves to take them for walks on Seattle’s beaches, along with the family’s Weimaraner Alice. To Betsy, the deep blue water is calming and seeing the mountains in the distance makes her feel like Seattle is giving her a hug.
