With little time remaining until the School of Dramatic Arts opens its spring show, William Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night,” Director Paul Urcioli is in full creative mode.

But, being a director isn’t the only role he’s currently playing. A father, director, assistant professor of theatre practice in performance at USC and a long-time professional creative, Urcioli has balanced many different lifestyles. Throughout his career, he’s continued doing every job he’s been tasked with, with the belief of doing so “without complaint.”

The Daily Trojan Magazine editors sat down with Urcioli in mid-February to discuss the ways he’s seen the industry change, how students can reconnect with creativity and the ways he’s continued to foster his love of acting even when the current political climate makes it hard to do so.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

DAILY TROJAN: You attended New York University, taught at acting schools and became an artist in residence, among many other career stepping stones. So with that, how did you find acting? Was it a pursuit that felt natural? How did you crack into the industry?

PAUL URCIOLI: When I got to my little college in New Jersey, I said, “Oh, you know what, I’m going to audition for the fall show because theater people are fun,” and then it was a terrible downhill slide into oblivion of just being sucked into the world of acting and show business.

DT: How do you manage the pressure to book a job? How do you balance that with patience and  commitment to artistry?

URCIOLI: When you say to yourself, I want to be an artist, you have to make your peace with the fact that it’s supposedly going to make you happy to get out of bed every day and say, “This is who I am, and this is what I do” — and if you judge your worth on whether or not you have your own series or an Emmy or commercials running or a TV deal or a movie deal, you’re going to spend your life really, really unhappy. No matter how successful you are, actors are always unsatisfied.

You look up the percentages of how many people are in the Screen Actors Guild, what percentage of us in [SAG-AFTRA] work with regularity, and what percentage of those people you have actually heard of: It’s infinitesimal. … Less than 1% of the entire union is anybody who you’d be like, “Oh, I know that person.” The rest of those people are working every day, and they go from job to job. They have a nice career, they teach, they do theater with their friends or they create their own work.

The life of being an artist is balancing the idea that what I do and what I’ve chosen to do with my life won’t always be financially remunerative, but it has to give back in a deeper way.

DT: Sort of pivoting a little bit, you have an extensive biography, flush with many theater credits, director attributions and guest appearances on TV shows. Could you talk a little bit about some of your favorite appearances and or projects that you’ve helped with?

URCIOLI: I got to be on set for two days with Martin Scorsese doing “The Wolf of Wall Street” (2013). The part that I got cast in got trimmed down, but just the act of being in that space as an actor, and a teacher and a director, spending a couple of days watching and being on his set was really kind of awesome.

DT: Yeah, that’s a great icebreaker: “I met Martin Scorsese.”

URCIOLI: Yeah, not a tall man — very, very short, big, black overcoat, giant eyebrows.

DT: You mentioned being both in screen and stage acting, so as someone who has to straddle both disciplines, how do you navigate the differences between the two?

URCIOLI: It’s easier to take a really well-trained stage actor and make them into a good on-camera actor, and it’s harder the other way: somebody who only knows how to act on camera now has [to be on stage].

Being on stage is an athletic event. You’re in charge of the storytelling. You need a certain amount of energy and drive. You have to take [the] stage and carry the narrative, and you rehearse for six weeks to get it exactly so. When you’re done, you come off stage, take off your makeup, change your costume, meet your friends outside, and go to the pub and have a beer in it.

You’re sailing for hours on adrenaline from the act of doing it because it’s that kind of experience. … When I come home from a film set, I’m exhausted because you work at your peak, and then you stop for 20 minutes while they change the lights.

DT: So you transition between the two now. Is it a hard transition to go completely 180 degrees?

URCIOLI: You’re still an athlete, you’re just using different muscles. That’s sort of the way I look at it: If you’re trained, you should be able to go back and forth.

DT: Is there a striking difference between the responsibilities you have to follow at home, those for directing and acting, and those for teaching?

URCIOLI: With directing “Twelfth Night,” things are unfairly shifted in one direction, because that play is taking up so much of my time. [But] acting is about the pursuit of goals and to do them with passion and with clarity, despite how you might be feeling.

DT: We’ve discussed that you transition from being a father at home to a professor at USC and at other universities to a professional creative, being an actor and director. Do you find it to be difficult at all to transition between these spheres, or do you feel like they all encompass you and you’re not really switching roles?

URCIOLI: There’s definitely a shift. It might be a really crappy day at home, and we have a bad breakfast and fight with the kids on the way to school. But when I go into rehearsal, I’m like, “Oh, my God, I love what I do,” and I’m sitting there in the Bing Theatre, directing these actors, and I’m just joyful. Then I get home, and it’s “I’m exhausted.”

DT: We saw on your website that you have listed other hobbies — sports like tennis and baseball, among others. Why do you think it’s important, even as a lifelong creative like yourself, to explore these less-creative pursuits in addition to your work?

URCIOLI: Everything’s related. I think too many people who get too intellectual or wrapped up in the thought of it forget that life is also about the physical, and all good actors know what it’s like. You have to be in your body. You can’t just be in your head.

I always tell my students: The older you get, the better actors you’re going to be. The more life experiences you have, the more you’ll be able to connect to characters you have. So I don’t think life can ever be about a narrow focus.