A Quote by Barrett Wilbert Weed
I got serious about performing, and I got serious about acting. It's very funny; singing has always been a very separate thing for me - until I went to college. I just studied musical theater because I was like, 'That means I can study voice and acting in the same major, and I won't have to double major.' Now I do musicals for a living.
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Singing was my first love and I never even considered it after I started acting, but now I'm bringing it back into my life. I trained from the ages of 11 to 17. When I moved to New York and got into serious acting, I just kind of abandoned the whole singing thing. But when I grew up in Pennsylvania I went to voice lessons once a week.
I was always drawn to performing, but I never thought I could. I have no idea what I wanted to do outside of the old cowboy-or-fireman. When I was in college, I got serious about acting. I started examining history and then everything related to the theater. History, art, all the other studies, if I could link them into the theater, then it became alive for me. It just opened up my eyes.
The funny thing is, because I was doing a lot of theater when I was a kid, and a lot of that was musical theater, as I got older I became more interested in acting as a separate entity and music as a separate entity, like songwriting and production and recording and playing music.
I love musicals but it's very, very different. It's really just a different form than serious drama, and has very different rules and a completely different set of characters and requirements and ambitions. It maybe shouldn't be as separate as it is, but it's got a different history. In terms of serious drama, I think you'd have to say that you could break it down essentially into the narrative realist tradition and experimental theater.
I went to performing arts high school, and I took dance and acting every day. Then, I went to Marymount Manhattan College and I have a B.A. in acting, with a concentration in theater performance and a minor in musical theater. I studied there for three years.
I did all the musicals in high school, and I loved it. And then I got to theater school at college, and was like, "No, I'm a serious actor. I want to do Shakespeare. I want to do classical theater." I took myself very seriously.
When I got to NYU, I immediately inquired about doing a double major in acting and photography.
Well, I've been acting for 50 years now, professionally. I've been acting a lot longer. My mother reckons I was acting when I got out of the womb. But because I've been working in the theater, I've probably only done about 25 movies but I've done more than 100 plays.
I think people are always really surprised when they realise I'm not a very serious person and that I'm not tremendously serious about acting. I don't like to rehearse; I hate improv. Directors that don't like to talk, they're my favourite ones.
I used to be a bit obsessed by acting but not anymore. I do enjoy acting but I probably enjoy it more now because it's easier. I can't work in the theater because to me it's too serious. It's like being in prison for me. I admire people that can do that but I can't do it. I'd rather live my life and do a bit of acting in between.
When you go to a college for acting, at least the college I went to, it's like everybody just singing and dancing and acting, and they all come together, and everyone's talking about head shots... It just turned me off. I was like, 'What is this? I don't understand this. People are singing in the hallways.'
I'm even stunned at some of the majors you can get in college these days. Like you can major in the mating habits of the Australian rabbit bat, major in leisure studies... Okay, get a journalism major. Okay, education major, journalism major. Right. Philosophy major, right. Archeology major. I don't know, whatever it is. Major in ballroom dance, of course. It doesn't replace work. How about a major in film studies? How about a major in black studies? How about a major in women studies? How about a major in home ec? Oops, sorry! No such thing.
I've got quite a low voice, so it's not your typical musical theater voice, but I do love musicals; they're a very different experience.
I've always been singing. Since day one. I started doing musical theater and you have to sing in musical theater and so that's where I got most of my training. So singing on stage, you just inevitably, when you're around other vocal artists, you get better at singing.
At Hofstra, I got a very well rounded education. I studied acting, but they wouldn't let me just study acting. I had to take classes in play analysis, directing, producing. I had no idea this would ever be relevant. And, of course, it's what I used the rest of my life.
My first love was singing. It was the first thing that really felt like it was a part of me. It's just in my blood. And acting came sort of out of singing because I did a lot of musical theater.
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