Dave Bricker (00:00)
Want to expand your speaking and storytelling skills and grow your influence business? This is Speakipedia Media brought to you by speakipedia .com. I’m your host, Dave Bricker, bringing you straight talk, smart strategies, and amazing stories from visionary speakers and thought leaders. I recorded this special interview back in March of 2023. My guest joined me from Australia and we didn’t have the bandwidth to record video.
but I know you’ll find the conversation interesting. Let’s get on with it. My guest is an actor, director, and writer based in Perth, Western Australia. He’s worked in theater, opera, dance, puppetry, film, TV, radio, and audio book narration. He’s an acting teacher and guest director at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts and is currently an artistic associate at Black Swan State Theatre Company of Western Australia.
I became aware of his talent when one of my professional speaking colleagues suggested I listen to an audio book he’d produced. In that book, he created unique voices and authentic accents for a huge cast of male and female characters from around the world.
Humphrey Bower, thank you for connecting from Australia to talk about the art of speaking.
Humphrey Bower (Speaking Samples)
She gave Lenny a brief smile, then turned to me. “Mr. Spade, if you’d like to follow me, we’re ready for you, she said crisply.” Instead they stared at him with love and wonder and Mrs. Peaslake stroked his hair. Our darling boy, George, she said.
Gay -org, said Mr Peaslake, trying out the sound of the hard G’s. That’s how you say it, isn’t it, my boy?
“Can’t do that, Miss Mary. We’d have to steam clean all the pipes, get the yeast vats started from scratch, build up the fermentation vats, take us all night to get underway again, cost a fortune and lost production. What’s more, you know it’s impossible to close the malt house. Barley’s piling up as it is with no place to store it. That’s all right, missus. Maltsters don’t belong in the association,” said Kirk.
Auntie seemed pleased. It’s nice to have some company. Sitting here alone, I’m nearly breaking a world record for stum and I’m not a person that doesn’t like to talk. Luckily, I was a good listener. So many of us in the professional speaking world think of ourselves as subject matter experts, and that makes us very emphatic lecturers much of the time.
Dave Bricker
Few of us think of ourselves as voice artists. So what are we missing out on? And what are our audiences missing out
Humphrey Bower
Well, I think the two categories are quite separate, although having said that, because I myself also work as a teacher, albeit an acting teacher and I guess trainer in that sense or subject matter enthusiast, I see an element of performance which extends beyond the stage or the sound stage to the classroom or the podium or wherever it might be that you subject enthusiasts are sharing your enthusiasm. And in fact, I think sharing enthusiasm is actually the key to performance in any sphere. I mean, I teach my acting students to find their pleasure in what they’re doing and that if they truly find their pleasure, the audience will share it. And if they’re not enjoying themselves, the audience won’t be. And I think I try and practice that myself, not only on stage or behind the microphone, but in the classroom or right now talking to you.
I dare say that your listeners, if they are interested in speaking in public, also would benefit from sharing the enthusiasm that they undoubtedly have for their subject matter with their audience. Well, I certainly couldn’t agree with you more.
Dave Bricker
And I find that many people focus on delivering the words, delivering the information at the expense of delivering the performance that drives the meanings of those words home to the audience. So that brings us onto this whole idea of you’re training as a stage actor, you teach stage acting, you play in theatrical productions, and there’s a lot of training, voice exercises, which we’ll talk about in a minute.
cold reading skills, stage work. And this training is mostly absent from the background of the average professional speaker. They develop some expertise, get invited to speak at a conference. The next thing you know, they’re running around from stage to stage, but they don’t get that acting experience. They don’t learn to really use this incredible instrument. That’s the human voice.
And what advice would you offer to speakers in that regard who… who want to expand their impact? I would say take some acting lessons.
Humphrey Bower
Go and join your local amateur theater group. Go and sign up for a workshop with a local or visiting actor or teacher. Join a local improv class. Take the plunge. I think a lot of people are terrified at the prospect of performing, whether that is speaking in public or whether it’s acting in a play. But I would say that that is totally that fear is is human and natural. mean, it’s it’s an unnatural thing to put yourself in front of an anonymous audience of 800 people, which is what I do regularly when I’m on stage. And I mean, one of the one of the basic skills involved in performance it’s not only the audience that has to suspend their disbelief, it’s actually the actor that has to suspend their disbelief and walk on stage. And many actors, you know, really, you know, are terrified until that moment when they step out onto the lights. There’s no amount of training that can overcome that. I personally don’t feel that for whatever reason. In fact, I’m often
strangely more relaxed in front of a crowd of 800 strangers than I am at a party or around a dinner table. I’m comfortable on one and I’m comfortable in public. I’m actually quite shy when it comes to social, normal, so -called normal social situations. And that’s true of many actors. So I wouldn’t let that deter your listeners from exploring that kind of training.
Dave Bricker
Yeah, and it’s funny because I too am an introvert. I lived on a sailboat for 15 years. So much I like to say I invented introvert and many professional speakers are introverts. And yet there’s that when you’re learning, you’re nervous about getting on stage. And later on, I think that nervousness becomes excitement. When I work with speakers, I tell them to turn nervous into service and think the impact they’re about to have on the audience and stop worrying about themselves.
But I’ll tell you, it’s just a fascinating thing that you can be so shy. And for me, I hate wandering around at a party talking to stranger after stranger, but if I can network with a hundred people from the front of the room and then wait for the best prospects for me to come up and talk to me after I’ve skipped over a lot of social awkwardness. So I think many actors and speakers are introverts and it’s it’s an interesting thing people don’t expect.
Humphrey Bower
yes. I mean, for me, the most terrifying place is not the stage. It’s the theater foyer. Without question, I mean, both before and after a show, whether I’m in it or not, you know.
I find it excruciating. But I think you’re right that the key is to take your focus off yourself and onto the audience, the subject matter, the text. And really, think what’s more important than the information or the words is the enthusiasm and the feelings and the images that you want to evoke
your audience, that’s really what matters. All the rest is just the trimmings. It’s just technicality. It’s really a service industry, isn’t it? Right. Well, in the sense that it is about serving. mean, at the end of the day, think acting is a vocation and it’s an old fashioned and unfashionable word, like teaching or medicine, I really believe that.
being a performer is a vocation and we certainly don’t do it for the money. I mean, some become celebrities, that’s due to a constellation of factors that doesn’t necessarily follow. That’s like a surplus. That’s a fringe benefit or curse. I’m very happy to have a private life unlike many actors who are celebrities and don’t have that. to go to the supermarket and not have people lining up for your autograph, I agree. absolutely. And even better when you’re, I mean, I’m probably, if you Google Humphrey Bower, I’ve been told, because I haven’t done it myself, that audio books come up more frequently than stage productions or TV appearances. And that’s fine.
And one of the advantages of that is that no one knows who I am when I walk into a supermarket. mean, people don’t tend to recognize me even on stage because I’m probably more of a character actor than a lead actor that, you know, if you’re familiar with that distinction, which, and I like to transform on stage and I like to transform when I’m narrating audio books as well, vocally and imaginatively.
So it’s nice because I can do my work, but certainly in the world of audio, no one’s gonna recognize me.
Dave Bricker
Yeah, I get it. I love working alone at home with my dogs, but let’s talk about this idea of some of the differences between stage production and audio books, because in a stage production, you usually get to play one character, and in an audio book, at least the way you do it, where you’re not narrating, but you’re voice acting, you get to play all of the characters. Now, I would think one of the saving graces is that you don’t have to memorize your parts, but that’s a heck of a responsibility. And at the same time, you don’t have the faces of an audience to look into. So there’s a certain amount of, there’s an imaginary or future audience that you’re serving. What appeals to you about one medium over the other?
Humphrey Bower
All the things you just mentioned appeal to me about audio or voice acting. I mean, I must say that that’s not at the expense of theater, which actually remains probably my first love. But I mean, you know, as you said, in no particular order, I mean, I love playing multiple characters. And as a matter of fact,
I have done a lot of stage work where I’ve played multiple characters. I’ve done quite a few one person shows where I do play different characters. And I love doing that. I love the fact that the audience is in on the game. They know that I’m not any one of those characters. I like transforming. But certainly in the case of audio books, depending on the book, it’s a marvelous opportunity to become other than yourself and do so multiple times. And for the listener to be in on that kind of contract, the listener knows that obviously they’re listening to one person. And so there’s a kind of imagination involved. I mean, as you said, the audience itself is imaginary for me because I might have a sound producer on the other side of the glass, but essentially
I’m telling a bedtime story to people that I’ll never meet. And I love that. I love that imaginary contract. But I also love the imagination that that imaginary audience brings in return, that they can’t see me, I’m not there for them. But there’s something very intimate about that relationship. And I love the fact that words evoke. I I love literature.
So I’m one of those actors who enjoys audio books. It’s not a universal for actors. And I think that’s partly because of my love of books full stop. I love that imaginary world. I love the fact that, you know, when I’m reading, I can go somewhere else. And that is quite different from live performance or film and television for that matter.
Dave Bricker
It’s interesting. Now I have next to no experience in terms of being a stage actor in the traditional sense, but I work with speakers a lot and I speak. So when I’m looking into that camera lens, I have this imaginary auditorium and I’m making sure to look out to the, up into the balcony and into the people in the back and hey, you down in the front row. And it’s very,
purely imaginary, but I get that. There are imaginary people I’m interacting with when I speak rather than speaking into a camera lens and looking at a teleprompter. And it’s interesting, but yet what you called the enthusiasm early is important. along those lines, a lot of speakers, they tend to get up on stage and narrate
that’s okay, but it’s more of a lecture recounting something that happened in the past. “I had a conversation with my mother and I said this and she said that. And I said,” that gets pretty boring quickly. Whereas switching characters from the narrator to yourself back in the story, back to the narrator, and then to your mother and you back in the story. This opens up all sorts of possibilities for performance that make that dialogue
for one example, sounds so much more real and authentic and present to the audience, but it also opens up opportunities to develop this flexibility to change our voices, to emulate these characters, men and women. And what attracted me to your work is you have an extraordinary ability to do just that, to voice.
so many characters in one book. And I think in Shantaram, you voice, I’m guessing 20 different nationalities and a hundred characters. And that’s not something most people can do. The subtle differences between Canadian English and American English, variations on UK English, Indian and French and Arab accents.
In Bryce Courtenay’s Jack of Diamonds, you narrate the whole book between characters in Canadian English, and in Courtenay’s The Power of One, we hear Afrikaans and Zulu dialects. So I have so many questions in that regard, and since that’s something you’re really known for, I’ll drill down to a few specific questions. First, how do you manage these genders and nationalities and remain sensitively non -offensive. Is that something you worry about?
Humphrey Bower
It’s something I think about and it’s become more of an issue now than it was 20 years ago, at least for me, possibly not for my listeners. I think, you know, now the politics of identity is much more to the forefront and especially with regard to acting and representation and representation of cultural minorities and the whole question of authenticity and who is allowed to tell whose stories. In fact, I think in the United States that those issues are even more problematic than they are in Australia. We’re kind of catching up. And broadly speaking, I think all of that is a good thing and that it has to be worked
So when I recorded Shantaram 20 years ago, as you say, I was well known for narrating novels that involved multiple characters and for using accents and playing, you know, men and women and different social classes and different physicalities and all of that. And I didn’t really think about all that much. just did it because it seemed like that was the nature of the job. When it came to recording the sequel last year, I spoke at some length with the studio and the producers and the publishers and with Greg Roberts, the author actually, about this issue because I said, you know, I think that this this is going to be, we’re living in a different world now. And, you know, there are people who are going to be offended or upset or object to the fact that, you know, a white, a white actor is playing, you know, black and brown characters and putting on the voices of, you know, characters who are Indian and Palestinian and Iranian and I mean to some extent this was always an issue for me in terms of research because I love researching proper names, names of people and places and phrases that are in other languages and I’ve got to speak them with some degree of accuracy and authenticity.
This is really applying that same sense of responsibility to accents and pitch and gender and physicality. Because I’m an actor, I believe that we do have the right to tell other people’s stories. That’s a very contentious thing to say, but I’m going to come out and say it. Love it. And actually, I think that is an important aspect of social justice, in fact. I don’t think we’re limited to playing ourselves, no matter who we are and no matter what our background is or our gender or whatever. mean, in fact, you know, I, one of the reasons that I believe in diversity and people having the right to change and to identify actually, you know, as they as they choose or know themselves to be, you know, that applies to the actor as well. So it’s a complex area. I try not to let it inhibit me artistically.
In the case of that particular book, I felt and the author agreed, which to me is actually paramount. mean, the author is the author. That, know, he wanted me to do the and he wanted me to put on accents and use accents, I should say. And, you know, the book is probably 50 % dialogue. So it felt important. It felt part of the genre of that book. I mean, I’ve recorded a lot of books where I don’t do that. I mean, I’ve recorded nonfiction or I’ve recorded books that might be from perspective in the of a single character, but it doesn’t feel right to you know, to put on, you know, to turn that character into a kind of an actor. I mean, in the case of Shantaram, it’s interesting because, you know, he’s based the central character. The book is written in the first person and he’s based the central character on himself. And he himself is an Australian living in Mumbai, but he’s kind of a chameleon himself, both the character and the author.
So to me, it made sense that when he tells his story, he plays those characters to the hilt.
Dave Bricker
Yeah, absolutely. I love that aspect of so many of your books, that chameleon -like tendency.
Humphrey Bower Narrates
He hesitated, and Anna realized he wanted to say more. What is it, Lowak? You see, Anna, I have some books, Chinese books. If the Japan soldier police have not burned them, can Bodhi give them to Till to bring? No, Anna cried. There will be eyes and spies everywhere. The Kempei tai have issued orders to the locals to find you, to find all the Chinese. But you must not go to the Chinese quarter.
The Governor -General turns towards David. Not you, sir, that fat army chappie in the uniform next to you. He points an accusing finger at Major -General Bridges, a man with a high colour and a distinctly bellicose look about him. Your troops, aren’t they? Should be on time!
He laughed. I told the car dealer I wanted him to jump me up the list or maybe I’d have to organize a visit from one or two of my Chicago friends.
Dave Bricker
Now, another thing that a lot of actors will not attempt or can’t pull off convincingly is men’s and women’s voices. And it’s one thing for a man to convey a woman’s voice. And then I’ve actually heard of very few women doing men’s voices and of course the resonance is very different. They have to extend their resonance downward rather than choke it off but I’m not really using the right terms.
I’m wondering, are there techniques, ideas, mindsets? How do you play women’s voices as a man or vice versa? there any advice you can offer there?
Humphrey Bower
Look, the first thing I would say is that the word you used about mindset is important. I visualize not only what I’m talking about, but I visualize the person who is speaking and I let that translate into my voice. I don’t consciously manipulate my voice from the outside. I’m speaking personally here. I can’t speak for other people. So to me, the as you put it, visualizing that character, feelings, their physical and emotional being, you know, even their height or their physical shape, I think about. And I let that translate itself into my voice. As far as, how can I put this? I’m not trying to
I’m not trying to pass in that sense, in inverted commas, but there is a kind of, I mean, I spoke about this to my students just last week, actually. There is a kind of drag involved in a way. I’m not talking about a sexual performance. I’m talking about the fact that what I think is that the essence of drag is that everyone knows that you’re not trying to pass, that you are dressing up as someone else. It’s not about, it’s not about deceiving the listener. mean, everyone who listens to my books knows that it’s a man speaking. And I think even if they heard me playing, you know, female characters, they would know that. but it’s so it’s, it’s, it’s more about
Again, it’s about performance and, you know, to a degree, I think, you know, I mean, I’m not saying anything very originally. I think, you know, masculinity and femininity are performed as much as they are biological. I mean, they’re both. but. Yeah, to me, it’s to me, it’s it’s about. Visualizing and and having fun with it.
But doing it respectfully and truthfully as well. I mean, it’s the same about playing people from a different culture or a different race. I’m not trying to pass as them and I’m certainly not making fun of them, I hope. Well, I know I’m not and I hope it doesn’t come across that way. It’s about authentically inhabiting their… what’s inside them.
Dave Bricker
And Humphrey, I think when I came up with that question, I was originally hoping for a more technical answer, but considering what you just said, I love that idea. In other words, if you’re a man, don’t try to pretend to be a woman because you’re not going to do that authentically. Just channel some of your own femininity or I guess the opposite if you’re a woman conveying a man’s voice and instead of trying to deceive the readers, how am I going to make them think I’m this? use your own range, your own instrument and do the best you can and let the audience fill in the blanks. I think that’s a very powerful answer.
Humphrey Bower
I think if I can add to what you’ve just said, because I agree with what you’ve just said, I think everyone is going to inhabit that character in their own way. So it’s not about pretending that you’re not you. I mean, that’s true of any role. You know, every actor inhabits a role in their own way. And that’s true of a reader and a narrator. And it’s true when you’re…
inhabiting a role which is other than yourself in terms of gender or race. And I think, you know, that does that does involve, as you say, drawing on aspects. also involves thinking about issues like politics and power and, you know, who is who’s in power in any situation. mean, you know, I teach my students with if you’re if I often get my students
in theater acting to play the opposite gender or to play different cultures or races actually. And it’s not about impersonating. In fact, sometimes it’s just about walking in their shoes and thinking about what’s the situation here. If you’re playing a young woman whose father wants you to marry someone and you don’t have any say in the matter, which is a common plot for hundreds of years, if not thousands of years of Western and not just Western theater, then you can explore that as a man playing a woman in that situation. And the more authentically you explore that, you will change how you speak and how you move.
Dave Bricker
Beautiful, I love that. And that takes me to foreign accents because I’ve always been amazed at how English, and I’m sure it’s true in other languages, but because I’m an English speaker, I’m not aware of many of the differences. For example, I can tell Cuban Spanish from Spanish Spanish because I live in Miami, but English has spread all over the world and everybody has made different music with the language. And there are these national characters and that’s something you’ve obviously done a lot of work on. It’s more than just channeling your inner Irishman. There’s some work there to internalize these accents, these subtle differences. And I’m wondering, How do you approach that? Is it a musical ear? And some people may just sponge that stuff up or is there a listening regimen that you use? I’m just curious how you do accents so well and so many of them.
Humphrey Bower
Well, I think both those things are true. I mean, I think, you know, I have a musical ear and you know, I’ve, you know, I think that some actors have that and some people have that comes to some people more naturally than others. And there’s no denying that. And frankly, I would say to your listeners that not everyone has to read audio books or tell stories in the same way. mean, some people will do that more naturally than others. But I would also say that whether you have that gift or not, research is
And I mean, I make extensive use in my prep time, you know, not only in, you know, doing research into looking up the pronunciation of things, but listening to those accents and the internet is a game changer was for me when it took off because suddenly I had access to an endless resource of, know, whether it’s, you know, YouTube being, you know, speakers with particular accents, speaking English with particular accents, or, you know, there are websites like, there’s one called, I think it’s called Idea, and it’s dialects of speakers of English around the world. I mean, I can’t remember the exact title, but there’s a few of those websites where you can listen to samples of native speakers of, you know, Jamaican English or Irish English or Indian English or and much more specific than that, know speakers from particular regions and places and I mean I tend to pick it up by osmosis but you know, sometimes I do make notes I’ll write down, you know the vowels and exactly I have my own kind of notation system for You know how vowels change and I’ll make notes about that.
And then I find usually I can generalize and I’ll practice. Sometimes I’ll drive. When I’m driving, I’ll look at street signs as I drive along and I’ll say them in the accent that I’m working on at the moment. That might be English, South African or Zulu or Dutch, South African or they’re all different. And I’ll practice. I love doing that. So yeah, I think research is important.
Dave Bricker
Yeah, love that answer too. Now, in a book again, Shantaram or The Power of One, the Bryce Courtenay books, these dialogue heavy books with a lot of international characters, not only do you need to get all of the accents down, but then there might be multiple characters who use the same regional or cultural dialect. And I wonder, I mean, I envision you making a big Excel spreadsheet with notations for vocal characteristics. How do you keep all of those characters straight, get familiar enough with them to switch smoothly between the narrator’s voice and the character’s voice?
And then when you finally read and record, is it just a chunk at a time, or do you stop between characters and dialects and let some poor engineer stitch this stuff together? And it’s so smooth that I would guess that that’s not what happens, but the number of accents and characters, you’re combining the vocal technique with a very special performance of the literature. So how do you do that? That’s just amazing.
Humphrey Bower
Well, firstly, you’re right. I do it. I read it in sequence in chronological sequence and, we’ll stop when I make a mistake. But no, I don’t leave it to the poor producer to edit it together afterwards. It’s a continuous storytelling performance chronologically. I don’t have a spreadsheet where, you know, I don’t I mean,
What I do is I look at, when I read the text and prepare the text.
I look for stage directions, I call them actually, that in the narrative, there will be, you know, there are clues about what is the, you know, most of them are pretty obvious. And I’ll circle them in the text, you know, that when a character is described and or it’s clear from their name, what their, what their accent is, you know, I’ll circle that in the text as a reminder.
And then I visualize other things about them, which I’ve seen involving, you know, an Iranian and four other Indian bikey gang members. So it’s not just going to be about the accents. It’s going to be about there’ll be clues in the text as to which one is younger or older, which one is tall or short, which one is aggressive, which one is a trickster. And those things are in the text. And I literally will just mark the little circle around those. Often they’re adjectives. And I can see that on the page. there are visual reminders.
The text is my spreadsheet. I don’t need to make another one. And I mean, I guess it’s body memory. remember, you know, I mean, yeah, it’s, it’s amazing. The human mind is an amazing thing. You know, I mean, I agree with you. It seems extraordinary, but it often reminds me of the way I often think about, you know, how the doctors or psychiatrists remember one person from the next and what’s their story, but they do. And we all do except when we’re in a theater foyer, and then I can’t remember who anyone is, you know, and get tongue tied about people’s names. But I don’t have that problem narrating a book. to me, keeps my brain active and alive. I think you just have to trust, trust, trust your, the human memory is an amazing thing.
Dave Bricker
Absolutely. So you’ve had the opportunity to get deeper into some very good books than most of the people who actually read them. And I know I’ve gotten deeper into those books by listening to you read them, but have you written anything yourself, especially material that takes advantage of the range of your vocal capabilities?
I’ve written for the theatre, I’ve written for performance and I have certainly written for myself. I mean, I also have written a lot of adaptations, including adaptations of books that I’ve narrated because sometimes I’ve narrated a book and then gone, wow, this would make an amazing, you know, performance. And, you know, I’ve done that a few times.
So I’ve adapted them, but I’ve also written some original material for theater. And for sure, when I write those stories, if they’re monologues or I think about the fact that I’m gonna be playing different characters and that voice is gonna be what distinguishes them. Or if I’m writing dialogue, I mean, a lot of actors, I would write it actually in my experience. And a lot of actors are very good at writing dialogue, particularly. They’re not always good at structure or narrative, but they’re usually very good at dialogue. And because they speak it for a living, but they have that kind of imagination and they can write voice very well. So I guess I hope I fall into that category.
Dave Bricker
Well, just a few more questions:
So you’ve been taking the audio book to a level that few narrators do by voice acting rather than narrating. And my question is, why stop there? What about adding music and sound effects? Is it just too much? Does it dilute what you’re doing? Or do you think audio books could move back toward the golden days of radio like Orson Welles, War of the Worlds?
So where does the audio book art form stop and the radio play begin?
Humphrey Bower
Well, I don’t think there are hard and fast lines in the sand. mean, I think, you know, they overlap or there is a continuum. Having said that, think.
I mean, most of the audio books that I’ve recorded have not involved sound, other sound effects or music or, know, and I respect that as a form because I think that leaves it to the reader, the reader’s imagination and the actor’s craft. I think, you know, I mean, in a way adding sound and music is like in theater adding more and more lighting and scenery, video projections and sound. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but there’s also a case to be made for theater that really just focuses on the actor and the text. And so I think of audio books in that category. I think of radio drama as really a genre unto itself, which I think, that example you gave of, I mean, Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre Company, they took radio drama to a very high level.
That has kind of died out a little bit here in Australia. I mean, when I was a younger actor, I got regular work on a show called Airplay that was on Radio National, which is, I guess, the equivalent of national public, what do you call it, national public radio.
And there were also book readings and there was a show called Poetica, which I often worked for. And I produced episodes of that as well, which meant I did mix in. I worked with a sound engineer and we did use music and sound and, you know, it was more like editing a film. And I think that those forms are making a comeback in the realm of podcasts now.
And I know my, you know, I’ve got kids in their late 20s and a lot of the students I teach in their 20s. I know that they listen to a lot of not only audio books, but they listen to podcasts. And I think, you know, that that genre is making a comeback in a different medium. But I think it’s a similar genre to what we think of as the radio play, actually. And I mean, that’s true of documentaries as well. mean, a radio show like This American Life, you know, to take a famous example. To me, that clearly has elements of radio drama, radio theatre, you know, it’s, you know, the mixing, the use of sound, the plotting. mean, episodes of that show have plots. There’s no question about it. They make for gripping drama and they have comedy and, you know, moments of pathos and suspense. So I think all of those things are valid. I think, you know, there are no, you know, rules are made to be broken, but I think, you know, they are, there are different forms and, and you have to be careful not to swap the acting with effects.
Dave Bricker
Wonderful.
Humphrey Bower
No matter what, no matter what the medium.
Dave Bricker
I like what you said about a form that focuses on the actor and the text. I like that distinction very much. It’s a good conceptual carrying handle for at least a certain category of audiobook. So in a couple in closing, I know that one day in spite of how many hundreds of hours of you’ve recorded, I’m gonna run out.
So two questions on that. First of all, what do you do to keep your voice in shape for that level of project? That’s a lot of voice work. I know I would be clearing my throat and going hoarse.
And then when I run out of Humphrey Bower audio book narration, who else should I listen to? Is there anyone else who inspires you, who’s doing something similar.
Humphrey Bower
Well, look, there are hundreds of narrators and, you know, I don’t have any particular heroes. I mean, I have to admit that I don’t listen to a lot of audio books. In fact, I don’t usually listen to my own audio books unless I’m using them as part of a teaching for a class. you know, actors like everyone else, hate, we actually, people might not believe this, but we hate the sound of our own voices.
You know, there’s nothing more intimate. Yeah, there’s nothing more intimate and uncanny than the sound of your own voice. I think it’s even more uncanny than seeing yourself on film is hearing yourself speak. It’s an uncanny experience. but I don’t listen to a lot of radio drama or audio books. I love, I read, you know, and I like the single focus of reading. you know, but I mean, there are many great narrators and, you know, there are many great actors who are also great narrators and there are actors with great voices. I mean, they’re no question, you know, I mean, it’s not that I aspire to have a voice like theirs, but I aspire to have a voice that is as, you know, inspiring as theirs. I mean, you
actors like Willem Dafoe or, you know, in terms of, you know, American actors, you know, I mean, that guy’s got one of the greatest voices on the planet, in my opinion, as well as being a great actor or, you know, I mean, you know, famous English stage and film examples like Richard Burton is probably the most famous, you know, voice I can think of in … you know, almost in kind of acting history in some ways. I mean,
So, I mean, I don’t pretend to have voices like theirs, but I’m inspired by great voices when I hear them. And so, and there are actors, are plenty, there are plenty of voice actors like that around and plenty of people who, you know, I mean, everyone’s going to have their own favorites. What was your second question? What do you do when, when, when, well, I mean, I’m going to keep doing this as long as I can. And I reckon I’ve probably got another, you know, 20 years to go.
And my voice changes and gets older. you know, I mean, I’ve been doing this for probably, you know, nearly at least 25 years, maybe 30 years. I probably started doing this in my, in my, you know, late twenties. And I’m now in my, you know, fifties and I’ve probably got another 20 years or so to go. mean, one of the great things about being an actor is, you know, you can keep going till you drop and,
And by continuing, continue to, you know, you continue, know, if you use it, you don’t lose it. And that applies to your mind and it also applies to your voice. And so that’s the other aspect to your question was about, or maybe it was your previous question, was kind of about stamina and voice.
And I don’t have a daily practice voice warm up or routine warm up and vocal, but mostly physical actually. In my experience, taking care of my body through regular exercise and yoga, that usually tunes up my voice actually. Usually I find if I do a physical warm up before going on stage, my voice is free and liberated as well. But I would say beyond that, you know, because I’ve done it a lot, my voice is kind of match fit. And that’s the answer to the question of, you know, how do you do it without your voice getting tired is to practice to do it. And the more you do it, the better you get.
Dave Bricker
Wonderful. Well, Humphrey, you’ve been very generous with your time and with your information. Any closing remarks specifically for people who are speakers who might get some benefit from focusing more on acting?
Humphrey Bower
Yeah, I mean, I guess I would say I would encourage speakers to go and do some acting lessons, actually, not because they want to be actors or become actors. But because it’s fun and I believe that it will enhance your capacity to perform as a speaker and to be a human being.
Dave Bricker
Well, thank you again. My guest has been Humphrey Bower. It’s been a delight speaking with you today.
Humphrey Bower
Great. Thank you, Dave. It’s been a great pleasure.
Dave Bricker
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