By Helen Harlan
For Sacramento stage actor Mayette McDonald, managing the acting bite came with a healthy dose of pragmatism from a young age.
“Growing up, my dad was very supportive of me acting, which is uncharacteristic, I think, of Asian American families,” says McDonald, whose parents are both immigrants from the Philippines. “He just said, ‘I don’t care what you study, as long as you get a degree, because then you can get a job, and then you’ll be fine, and you can do whatever you want.’”
McDonald took her father’s advice to heart and got a degree in theater from Sacramento State, where she was drawn to the stage while satisfying general education requirements — once again tempering her rational and artistic sides.
“I would see the plays that were happening on campus, and I was like, ‘No, this is what I want to do. This is what makes me happy,’” she reflects.
After graduation, McDonald joined up with B Street Theatre, appearing in a production of Rolin Jones’s “The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow” while heading on tour with the theater’s fantasy series. Touring meant traveling throughout the Bay Area and Central Valley and returning home the same night.
“It was fun,” she says, thinking back. “I had the energy for it at the time. It’s rigorous, but it was really great.”
At age 23, McDonald took a hard right into the purely practical, quitting the stage for a full-time tech job in the Bay Area, opting for stability. The break lasted 12 years.
The acting bug bit McDonald again in 2022 when she randomly ran into Michael Stevenson, Capital Stage’s artistic director. Stevenson encouraged her to audition for CapStage’s 2022 production of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s “Gloria.”
McDonald got the role, and she’s been back in the Sacramento acting scene ever since. She most recently appeared in CapStage’s fall production of Jonathan Spector’s ensemble comedy “Eureka Day.”
During “Gloria,” McDonald quit her tech job and started working at CalRecycle — a change that allows her generous benefits and time off. That time off came in handy during the “Eureka Day” tech week; the grinding, and often tedious days before a show’s opening night when actors, technical directors and designers build the final production.
“I was able to take time off for the whole tech week for this show,” McDonald says. “So I feel like I’m finding a good balance being at the state and being able to do shows outside of that.”
So what’s up next? McDonald has some staged readings in the works and wants to stay active in the local theater scene, perhaps even expanding her sights to the Bay Area. Looking back, she says she has no regrets about taking time off from acting and is happy that she finally struck a deal that combines passion and practicality.
“For me, it was always important to first take care of stability first,” she says. “So that I can then have the freedom to play and do what actually makes me happy.”