As someone whose body just...doesn't always do what they want it to do, that hurts more often than not, that has never quite looked like they want it to look, can I just talk about how FREEING voice acting is????

I absolutely love being onstage and I'm confident in my abilities as a stage actor, but the reality is that appearance plays a certain role (heh) in casting, and my own body's ability to do what the role requires matters a great deal.

I did The Sound of Music a couple years ago and it was the first musical I had done in years. It was a BEAUTIFUL experience and I'd go back and do it all over again, but it literally took me three months to recover after it closed because it was so physically demanding.

I'm a runner, I lift, I used to box, I walk a lot, I'm generally pretty active, but still...there's a certain amount of OOMPH that a stage performance requires that is very challenging for my body.

Voice acting is gentler on me. It's so freeing.

I don't have to pop three Aleve and soak in an epsom salt bath and ice all my joints the next morning after I record, you know? I can give my all in a vocal performance and be exhausted afterwards, but I can still MOVE afterwards. It's amazing.

I still want to go onstage sometimes, I'd still like to do a musical here and there. Musical theatre is where I started, that's where my roots are. But voice acting really lets me soar, and without the physically painful consequences.

All this to say: it's amazing, as someone with chronic pain, to have this space to do my thing.

And it's amazing that it's just...me, my voice, what I can do with it, that's what I'm judged on. I was told some very unkind things in high school and college about my body and general appearance that really hit my confidence and held me back for a long time.

And now, in large part due to getting the kind of roles I've always WANTED to play but rarely if ever GOT to, my confidence has gone way up! Funny how that works!

I hope this translates more and more to visual mediums.