A lifelong Hudson Valley native, Brett studied acting in New York City with Gregory Abels. He continued his studies upstate with Rodney Douglas, Sandy Shurin, and Roger Hendricks Simon. In addition to acting and writing, Brett also teaches acting and vocal empowerment. Brett has been practicing the Vocal Awareness Method for 22 years and has had the privilege to learn directly from its creator, Arthur Samuel Joseph.
Past roles on the stage include Guildenstern in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Austin in True West, Joey in A Steady Rain, Ivan in Art, Frederick Bates in Grinder's Stand, Ralph Clark in Our Country's Good, Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny Court Martial, George in Of Mice and Men, Lucky in Waiting for Godot, John Merrick in The Elephant Man, the Wigmaker in Rashoman, and Leon Czolgosz in Assassins. Brett has also done film work and currently developing a television sitcom series, Defrim Means Entertainment!, with his good friend and collaborator Kai Van Der Putten.
Brent: Thanks for talking with me! You have a lot of experience with acting and voicework. Let’s start with your acting. What is the most challenging role you've ever prepared for in terms of memorization?
Brett: Without a doubt, the most difficult piece I've worked on is Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. I played Guildenstern.
Brent: Not surprising! Stoppard is a linguistic acrobat. What did it feel like to get your head around his language?
Brett: First off, this was the largest role I had ever done and remains so to this day. Secondly, the play is monologue after monologue made up of philosophical debates between the two characters on the nature of existence, chance, fate, the randomness of the universe, one’s inability to influence the course of one’s own life, discovering one's true purpose in the grand machinations of the universe, and the blurring of the lines between "reality" and the theater. Lastly, it’s full of wordplay and seeming non-sequiturs.
Brent: That is a tall order! It sounds even more daunting than that other bugbear of memorization, Waiting for Godot.
Brett: It is very reminiscent of Waiting for Godot in that much of the dialogue seems so random at first. It is wordy, intelligent, and perplexing with a logic all its own. The numerous rabbit holes in the storytelling seem to go nowhere but later reveal themselves to have been pointing the way since the beginning toward the inevitable fate of the two protagonists.
Brent: Stoppard isn’t known for lightness and brevity. The play also incorporates scenes from its source material, Hamlet, right?
Brett: Yes, there are bits of scenes from Hamlet that R&G wander in and out of with the accompanying language. The actor has his work cut out for him just in terms of memorization—let alone meaning, emotion, and character creation.
Brent: Agreed, the play itself is enough of a load to carry. What was happening behind the scenes of your production?
Brett: As if all these challenges weren’t enough, my co-lead hadn't acted in 20 years and was very rusty. Eventually he was quite good, but we were both sweating over those lines up to opening night! Our director was a lovely lady but was overwhelmed by the material. Then, she had a massive heart attack two months into rehearsals and needed a triple bypass! We weren't even halfway into getting the show set, and we had about a month until opening. We asked two other directors to help us with blocking and all the technical elements. It was a bit of a nightmare.
Brent: Your off-stage experience sounds like a farce, in the style of Noises Off. You could spin it off into its own play! How did it all turn out?
Brett: Fortunately, it all worked out, and we had a damned good show, all things considered. Still, it was never as deep as it could have been. I would love to have another crack at that role.
Brent: Maybe you will one day! How do you approach learning your role?
Brett: For this character, as with most plays I've worked on, I used every tool available to me. I relied on my phone a lot. I recorded all of the lines I had in every scene for every character. I used different voices for the other characters while saying my lines very slowly in a monotone. I left enough space to allow me to repeat the recorded lines without overlapping.
Brent: The actor David Josefsberg told me there’s an app called Rehearsal that helps with that. More and more actors rely on their phones to speak and listen to lines.
Brett: I spent a lot of time alone repeating the lines over and over in blocks. I looked for what I felt were the thoughts behind these blocks of lines and made logical connections with those thoughts and the words. I would listen to the recordings and then break the monologues down into these blocks of thought or movements. Then, I would try to say the lines slowly without making any mistakes until I reached the end of what I had worked on.
Brent: What did you do if you made a mistake?
Brett: If I made a mistake, I would review the lines and start over. I would repeat the section until I could get through it perfectly. Then, I would move on to the next section. Once I felt comfortable enough with the next section, I would start from the very beginning and continue to add more and more lines without a mistake. If I made a mistake, I would start over from the very beginning again until I could get through it.
Brent: Acting is truly an exercise in patience and comfort with the tedium of repetition. Kelley Curran told me how she incessantly wrote out and spoke aloud her lines for the role of Anna Karenina to internalize them in just four days! What did you do once you had mastered the lines?
Brett: Once I felt I had the lines down in a particular scene, I would begin looking for what the emotions and thoughts were behind the words. I would take my time repeating the lines with different intentions behind them until I found what I thought felt resonated true with me. I made a mental note of that thought or feeling in those lines. Then I would try to find what the connections were from one thought to another as they related to the lines and figure out how to make those connections in my heart and mind.
Brent: Several other actors, like Michael Rhodes, have opened my eyes to this, the idea of making intentional choices, including wrong ones, to try them out. Only by testing wrong paths can you hope to get it right. It sounds like your approach is to do that and then set down the lines as the foundation. Then you layer the emotions on top. Movement must be next.
Brett: Correct. After I felt satisfied with this phase of learning my lines, I would begin to physicalize the lines as I said them. I would pay close attention to the feelings that were evoked as I added this element to my rehearsal at home. I would listen to the recordings I made on my earbuds at every opportunity—driving, working out, cleaning the house, everything! I didn't watch TV or listen to music for three months! Well, that's a bit of hyperbole, but not much!
Brent: You commit full time, body and soul! What about practicing with your scene partner?
Brett: My co-lead, Steve, was good enough to meet with me outside of rehearsals. We ran lines over and over. Ultimately, what helped the most was trusting in myself and my partner that we had the lines down. Then, we’d rehearse with full physicality on stage and off-book. Doing so allowed the lines to connect inside to my physical action. This became my “safe space”; it gave me enough inner stability to allow me to take some risks on stage.
Brent: What do you love about teaching effective communication? Why is it important?
Brett: As far as teaching voicework and communication, I believe that liberating one's voice is essential to living a fulfilling life. Freeing the speaking voice means liberating the inner voice. The voice is one of the greatest gifts that humans have that sets us apart from other members of the animal kingdom.
Brent: You have a kindred spirit in Rocco dal Vera, a prolific voice artist, who sadly passed away a few years ago. He couldn’t say enough about the breadth and depth of the human voice.
Brett: The voice is the most amazing instrument of expression, yet so many of us take it for granted. We are completely unaware of its potential power and beauty. Most of us speak and communicate in a completely habitual, unconscious, and unempowered way. Freeing our voice allows us to become what we are capable of and share the gift of ourselves with the world. It all starts with the quality of the breath. The quality of the breath determines the quality of the voice it produces.
Brent: How do you start with breath?
Brett: Most of my students have reacted with some kind of discomfort and resistance to what I teach.
Brent: Really, why?
Brett: I show them a completely different way to breathe, and that depends on a completely different way of how they hold themselves and relate to their bodies. It requires a complete reboot of how they relate to breathing. They find it a lot to process.
Brent: We all breathe every moment of every day without thinking about it—and live. So we must think we’re already doing it right.
Brett: Exactly. A lot of us think, "I know how to breathe!" However, we later realize that what we have grown accustomed to is only a fraction of what we are capable of. That fraction often involves excessive and unnecessary muscular action that is tiring and inefficient for vocalizing. I try to guide them—in a gentle, non-judgmental way—to experience a difference in how they feel. I also move slowly and encourage them to enjoy the process. When I do encounter resistance, I explain that they are learning a new skill. They should expect to feel a little awkward at first as the body and mind attempt to incorporate these new behaviors.
Brent: How do you stretch them out of their comfort zone?
Brett: I go on to tell them that with any new skill we need to exaggerate behavior in order for the new behaviors to become integrated. I relate it to other things in their lives, such as learning ballet, driving a car for the first time, learning to play guitar or piano, jiu jitsu, cooking, etc. I never try to push students past what I think they can handle at any one time.
Brent: How do the students monitor their progress?
Brett: Recording students’ voices before and after voicework and playing it back to them often produces some eye-opening revelations. Suddenly, they feel and hear the vibration of their voice in a way they never have before. Something inside of them shifts. Things start to make sense. It’s a very exciting moment!
Brent: What would you like to see the future of voice training become?
Brett: I absolutely love teaching people to empower themselves through the voice and theater games. It is my hope that one day voicework will be as common as cell phones and part of every school's curriculum—along with meditation and financial intelligence. I'm always looking to take on new students. The more I teach, the more I heal myself.
Brent: I’m with you on that. Things like voicework, meditation, and of course trained-memory techniques have been around for millennia, and yet they are not as widely deployed as they could be. Any final thoughts about voicework or theater in general?
Brett: I love the theater. It is the greatest thing I have ever discovered and it is my life. It is so intangible yet so incredibly powerful. The actor shares the same air as the audience. We all breathe together the same air in the same space; we all participate in a sort of communion. Theater is one of the few art forms where once it has been performed it no longer exists save for in the memories of the actors and the audience. We simultaneously create and destroy.
Brent: Well, that is very powerful thought to end on. Thank you so much for sharing your time and wisdom.
Brett: My pleasure. Thank you!
You can reach Brett directly at brettvocalpower [at] gmail.com.