It’s hard to make a career as an actor in New York: Unless you wind up in a long-running show, most jobs last two months or less. Rent is high, the competition is intense, and much of the time, you don’t know where your next paycheck is coming from.

But for those willing to venture off the beaten path, there are other places to have a life in the theater. Ashland, Ore., the home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, is a small town with a population of around 20,000. The theaters are full, and the audiences — the majority of whom are from California, Oregon, and Washington — enthusiastic. But Ashland is definitely off the radar of New York casting agents. Working here isn’t like doing a stint at the Williamstown or Berkshire Theatre Festivals, where well-known New York actors regularly do shows in the summer.

What Ashland offers, however, is significant: a warm, supportive community, a chance to play an unusual variety of roles, and, not least, a degree of job security almost unknown in the theater world. The festival runs between February and October. Depending on which shows he’s in, an actor will get a six-, eight-, or ten-month contract. The starting Equity salary is $750 per week, and actors who have been in the company a long time make much more.

It’s not easy to get in: Hundreds of actors audition each year for only a handful of Equity positions. But once you’re accepted, you’re basically part of a family, and, as long as things go well, you’re asked back for each subsequent season. Several actors have been in the company for more than 15 seasons, and a few for more than 20.

It’s enough to get a few actors to trade in the excitement (and strain) of New York City for a calmer existence in rural Oregon. Two such actors, Gwendolyn Mulamba and Tiffany Adams, who play the female leads in Lynn Nottage’s “Intimate Apparel,” sat in a small OSF office in early August and explained what drew them West.

Ms. Mulamba, who plays Esther, a black seamstress in turn-of-the-century Manhattan, has an M.F.A. from New York University’s Tisch School for the Performing Arts and has spent her career mostly in the city, working at the Classical Theater of Harlem, and understudying the role of Esther in the Roundabout Theater Company’s production of “Intimate Apparel” in 2004. Ms. Adams, who plays a prostitute and friend of Esther’s named Mayme, grew up in Queens. They were both dressed beautifully, in frilly skirts, high-heeled sandals, and décolleté tops — proving that you can take the girl out of New York, but …

The women ended up in Ashland slightly by chance. Timothy Bond, a longtime director at Ashland, was hired to direct two productions of “Intimate Apparel” this year. (Nationally, it was the most produced play of the 2005–06 season.) The first, a co-production of the Cleveland Play House and the Actors Theatre of Louisville, had runs in those cities in January and February. The Ashland production opened in late March.

He went to New York to cast the first production, but he soon realized that he’d better ask the actors to commit to both. Because there were so many productions of “Intimate Apparel” being cast out of New York, he couldn’t expect to return in a few months and find an equivalent cast. So he asked Ms. Mulamba, Ms. Adams, and the other two black actors — Erik LaRay Harvey and Perri Gaffney — to be in both productions. (The actors playing the two white roles changed; in Ashland, they’re played by two festival regulars, Terri McMahon and Gregory Linington.)

The decision to leave New York for 10 months was tough, particularly for Ms. Adams, since her whole family is there. She had heard of Ashland, but didn’t know much about it. “Most of my friends are putting up their own work — renting out spaces and trying to start production companies,” Ms. Adams said.”I don’t know many actors who do the regional thing.”

Ms. Mulamba had recently given up another ambition — a fashion business, making hats and scarves out of vintage sweaters — to focus on acting. With the job understudying “Intimate Apparel” at the Roundabout, she felt that she was starting to get known by casting directors in New York. With that momentum going, it was difficult to leave.

“It’s very hard for an actor to have a career,” she explained. “I was reluctant: You feel like, when you leave the New York market and come back, you have to start all over again — greeting people, getting them to say, ‘Oh, okay, she’s back,’ and make appointments to talk to you about projects.”

Still, the chance to play Esther, with Mr. Bond directing — she had auditioned for his production of “Intimate Apparel” at the Goodman Theater in Chicago, but was unable to do it — was too good to pass up. She gave up her apartment in Harlem (she doesn’t like subletting) and signed on for the ten-month gig.

Both the long run and coming to Ashland have had substantial benefits, the women said. By the time they finished in Cleveland and Louisville, the cast of “Intimate Apparel” was already very close. They found the community in Ashland remarkably welcoming, as well.

Of the audiences, who tend to accost actors on the street to express their admiration, Ms. Adams said, “They’re so, so supportive. They’re there with you in the theater.They’re there with you on the bricks” — the plaza in the center of town. “They’re there with you in the grocery store, too.” She laughed. “Which I had to get used to. I’m used to being able to walk out of the house and be anonymous for a little while. You can’t be anonymous in this town.”

As for Ms. Mulamba, the atmosphere in Ashland reminded her of the South. “Everyone is just so warm,” she said. “I’m not an original New Yorker, so for me, when I got here, the generosity that came from people reminded me of Alabama.”

The play opened in late March, to largely positive reviews. The women have been busy, between “Intimate Apparel” and their roles in two of the festival’s Shakespeare productions. Ms. Adams is playing Anne Page in “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” Ms. Mulamba Lady Faulconbridge in “King John.”

But what will they do after October 28, when “Intimate Apparel” closes? Well, first they’re going back to New York for a short vacation. Then, in February, Ms. Adams will head to Los Angeles. She wants to try to live bi-coastally for a few years, so that she can do television and film work while keeping her connection to New York. “I have to go home,” she said. “I have a grandmother and a greatgrandmother.”

For her, job security isn’t the first, or even a high, priority. “I like the noncommitment” of the acting life, she said. “I have other interests” — sewing, volunteering in arts outreach programs, writing a one-women play — “so it’s okay if I don’t have a job right after one ends.”

And Ms. Mulamba? She is returning to Ashland, where next season she will play Varya in “The Cherry Orchard” — a plum classical role — as well as a part in a new play, “Distracted,” by Lisa Loomer. The respect with which the festival treats its actors made a big difference in her decision to stay, she said. Every actor who wants to come back gets a 15-minute private meeting with the artistic director, where the two discuss the actor’s interests and experience so far at the festival, and the actor presents his wish list of roles from the next season’s plays. (The current artistic director, Libby Appel, will retire at the end of the 2007 season; she will be succeeded by Bill Rauch, who has expressed a desire to make OSF a “truly national” theater company.) For an actor, to have that kind of power over his fate, and be invited to stretch in new directions, is unusual, to say the least.

“I appreciate it as an actor,” Ms. Mulamba said. “Even if you don’t get the role, you get a chance to say, ‘These are things I’m interested in, and, yes, I’m interested in working here again.'” She paused, then expanded on the thought: “I’m interested in working with people who want to work with me, who appreciate me and who respect my work and will give me the opportunity to grow as an artist — to have a bit of a career.”