#29 - Head Too Full

Not to be the type of working stiff who complains about how busy they are, but these past two months have been…a lot. And it’s all good stuff! But between prepping for a move to a new apartment, assisting in my first youth theatre program, writing a play, and exploring new genres of VO, I am stretched thin. So instead of a big ol’ essay this month, here are some stray observations since my last update:

• Spending a lot of time on the internet reading about the thing you’re trying to do is not the same thing as “research”.

• It’s a lot easier to “be yourself” when you know who that is.

• Kids aren’t so bad!

• Kids are still a LOT and anyone who spends a lot of time with them on a weekly basis has my utmost respect, couldn’t be me.

• Instead of “everything happens for a reason”, try “you can find meaning in anything.”

• Obsessing about whether people will misinterpret your motives is not as fun or productive, so just be as genuine as you want and don’t let shame in.

• Turns out writing a full-length play after two years of forgoing a regular creative practice takes a lot longer than it usually would.

• My cat is perfect and often knows I’m stressed out before I do.

We’re celebrating the end of Wind Breaker’s second season with a signing event! Stop by Geek Out in Burleson between 10am - 4pm and come meet the supporting cast, including Kiba Walker and Brandon Acosta fresh off their series debuts!

Recent Gigs

Since my last update, I have provided additional voices for the following projects:

• Fire Force, Season 3: Episode 10

• I’ve Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out my Level, Season 2: Episode 12

Featured Role: Chiyo Obata, Psycho-Pass Season 3 & Psycho-Pass: First Inspector

I have been sitting on this announcement since OCTOBER.

Psycho-Pass— a gritty psychological thriller akin to Minority Report and Bladerunner written by one of Japan’s most critically-acclaimed minds — is the show that got me back into anime in my junior year of college. I didn’t watch it after the first season, but it stuck with me due to its narrative ambition, economical storytelling, and its stark depiction of a dystopia masquerading as a some tech bro’s dream of AI’s impact on crime. As soon as I got the email that I was going to be a small part of this world, I dove back in and inhaled the second season, two movies, and the to-be-dubbed third season.

POTENTIAL SPOILERS

Chiyo’s story is small but stirring. An angry doll of a woman, her appearances are marked by the outlandish outfits she wears, sometimes in straightforward lolita-style dresses and other times more aligned with a 70’s punk. She’s a woman rebelling against homogeneity and public perception, and yet obsessed with propriety — her violent outbursts and loud fashion clash with her insistence on manners, on the value she places on quid pro quo, on her unspoken need for praise.

Ultimately Chiyo is undone by her base desires for comfort, direction, and love. Her storyline centers on her relationship with Koichi Azusawa, a seemingly carefree Bifrost agent with a hidden agenda — over the season she transforms from an irritated, resentful subordinate to an active executor of Azusawa’s vision, at first because she sees direct results from their alliance and then later because of his unflappable cheer in the face of her ire. No matter how much poison Chiyo spits at him, Azusawa responds with warmth, even going so far as to say he loves her wit and spirit.

I don’t know if anyone else has ever told Chiyo they’ve loved something about her before.

Chiyo’s final scene places her by a river as snow falls around her, waiting for Azusawa to return from his final confrontation with Arata Shindo and the Sybil System. He never arrives — instead police cars swarm around her as she stands stock still, for the first time betraying no sign of anger, as the noose tightens and her bright future crashes down.

Spoilers End

As I said in my announcement post, this role is one of the most challenging I’ve been given in my professional career. I had comparatively little time to find Chiyo’s rhythm, and to discover ways to tell her story with subtlety while maintaining her dynamism and rage. I hope I was able to do her justice.

Consume!

Quinn Shepard’s film “Not Okay” is an odd duck of a movie that certainly won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. I was won over by its brutal depiction of a Bushwick-dwelling Millennial who is not smart enough to deliver upon her ambition, directly contrasted with a young victim of tragedy struggling to give purpose to her hurt while avoiding burial by apathetic detractors.

The performances are good. The characters are complicated and often unlikable. The narrative is somehow able to (usually) lean into the absurdity and cruelty inherent in its premise while leaving room for empathy. You may not come away with anything profound to say about “cancel culture” but you might have an opportunity to interrogate your own ideas of what constitutes a cancellable offense, what the consequences of “cancellation” actually are, and who gets the benefit of the doubt before a public fall from grace to begin with.

Performance(s) of the Week

Morgan Lauré has been in your favorite anime. Full stop. But not necessarily out front and center in a role a casual fan would recognize. So it’s a delight to see her given not one, but TWO complex characters to sink her teeth into this season.

Lauré approaches two very different roles with a subtlety and grace that I aspire to. Whether giving the buttoned-up Queen moments of warmth and yearning, or selecting the perfect moment for Hachisuka’s teeth to pierce her silky-smooth, offhand delivery, she has complete command of each scene she’s featured in. I am wishing and hoping that these roles bring her skills to new audiences.

Maybe One Nice Story

In May I was a guest at my second signing event hosted by Anime Yankii at Vista Mall in Lewisville - it was a nice, chill day where I, and my fellow Makeine castmates, got the luxury of chatting with our visitors.

Around midday I met a high schooler who’d just gotten into anime and wasn’t familiar with our show, but was excited to get recommendations for her watch list. Eventually she revealed that she loves to draw and wants to pursue that more after school - but she’s also in theatre, and wants to learn voice acting, and is getting into writing her own stories.

I remembered the sketchbook I kept with me in high school full of oddly-proportioned magical teens, and the over-written fan fiction I cranked out day after day, and said “I was the same way at 16.”

“How did you decide on what to do?” she asked.

And I got a weird prickly feeling that I can only describe as “recognition”, both of the feeling that spurred this question and the knowledge that I was about to say something really cool.

I looked this kid right in the eye and I said “I didn’t.”

I was privileged when I was younger to have a wide range of creative interests that never got squashed, and then later to join a theatre program that encouraged a multi-disciplinary approach to stagecraft, but the world loves a specialist. Not everyone gets that encouragement to express your ideas any way you can, especially when you’re young and can’t see a way to live a creative life.

This girl seemed to appreciate the sentiment, so I’m saying it again: if you want to draw, draw. If you want to write, keep a notebook with you so you can do it anytime. If you want to act, or do stand-up comedy, or make games, do those things. We are constrained by time, our personal energy levels, and our level of financial freedom, but even an unpolished, hastily-made piece of art is better than no art at all.

You’ll be really busy. You might even get overwhelmed. But you’ll never be bored. And when you have something to say, you’ll have more ways you can go about saying it.

Hollis Beck is a performer and writer who crafts narratives about queer identity, found families, and people who try very hard. More information can be found on her website.