VAM 201 | Interview with Crispin Freeman, Part 2
Welcome to episode 201 of the Voice Acting Mastery podcast with yours truly, Crispin Freeman!
As always, you can listen to the podcast using the player above, or download the mp3 using the link at the bottom of this blog post. The podcast is also available via the iTunes Store online. Just follow this link to view the podcast in iTunes:
http://www.voiceactingmastery.com/podcast
Welcome to part 2 of an interview of me, hosted by my good friend and fellow voice actor, Julie Nathanson! As I mentioned in the last episode, Julie had offered years ago to turn the tables on me and interview me on my own podcast! I thought it was a great idea and I’m so grateful that she agreed to take over as interviewer for this 4 episode series!
In the previous episode, Julie and I began by discussing my early childhood and how my inherent perfectionism, combined with my parents’ expectation that I excel in school, contributed to my tendency to approach any challenge with an overwhelming desire to get everything right and to make no mistakes. We also spoke about the time when a mentor of mine told me to repress my feelings and to never cry because he was convinced that that’s what it meant to be a man. I adopted his advice and never cried once between the ages of 11 and 16. In the midst of my stoic perfectionism, I was fortunate enough to also have a high school advisor who instead showed me when it was appropriate to break the rules and hack the system from time to time, especially if you were doing it for noble purposes. His insights gave me a psychological “get out jail free” card that really helped me to break out of the stifling “right and wrong” paradigm that I had been in throughout most of my childhood. Then, after a transformative experience at the Cherubs theater training program where I finally allowed myself to cry again, I realized two important things. First: that acting is not about being right or wrong, but instead acting is about whether your performance is more or less believable. And second: that acting is more akin to a mystical experience where you allow the aspects of your psyche that line up with the character you’re portraying to rise up out of you to meet that character. You’re not wearing the character like a mask; instead you are being vulnerable enough to share the most intimate parts of your inner universe so that you can fill the character with your physical and emotional authenticity.
In this episode, Julie asks me to tell the story of how I got started as a voice actor. While I did recount many of the details of my journey way back in episodes 4 and 5 of the podcast, this time around, Julie and I talk more in depth about some of my personal experiences during that time and how they affected my development as an actor. We discuss how my time spent with my family in Soviet Occupied Czechoslovakia helped me navigate my later relationship with the head of my graduate acting program, Andrei Serban, who is Romanian. Then, I explain how Joseph Campbell’s scholarly work on mythology and hero journeys, helped me develop a deeper understanding of my appreciation for Japanese animated storytelling. I also talk about what a massive effect J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy stories had on my psyche and how the animated version of his famous book, The Hobbit, not only helped teach me valuable life lessons about courage and emotional maturity, but also inspired me to regard storytelling as a sacred duty, especially storytelling for children, which has the potential to shape their psyches and their worldview for the rest of their lives.
It’s really satisfying for me to be able to address these subjects with such depth and nuance, and I’m so grateful to Julie for being so prepared and attentive as an interviewer!
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