This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Mason Bray: So we have Jake Bazel, who is the amazing voice actor and puppeteer behind Winnie the Pooh off Broadway right now in the new stage adaptation of Winnie the Pooh. He has also worked on Sesame Street as a puppet actor and several other amazing shows on movie, TV, and stage. So I'm so excited to talk with him and round out season six.

[0:20] Jake Bazel: Hi.

[0:21] Mason Bray: Hi.

[0:22] Jake Bazel: Hey, thank you for having me.

[0:24] Mason Bray: How are you?

[0:24] Jake Bazel: I am great.

[0:26] Jake Bazel: I am wonderful. It is a day off here. So we're resting, we're relaxing, we're recharging all the good things.

[0:33] Mason Bray: Absolutely. Now, would you like to start out by telling everyone how you got to where you are?

[0:38] Jake Bazel: Oh, sure. Well, that is a big question, but I'll give you the cliff notes version. So I am a puppeteer and a voice actor, as you mentioned. I kind of came up through the kids' media world more than I did the theater world. I was lucky when I was about 12 years old, I had a family friend who worked at Sesame Street, and I was a huge Muppets fan and a huge Jim Henson fan. So I was able to visit that day of filming, and that was kind of the day that changed a lot of things for me. I went on to sort of be mentored by some of those cast members, and then eventually fast forward many years, worked on the show. But Sesame was really my way into working in theater and in kids' TV and in puppets and in voice acting. From there it's just been hopping from job to job and doing the best we can. But that was really what started it all.

[1:33] Mason Bray: Yeah, and with Winnie the Pooh right now, I've heard some of the promotions of the show, and you oh my gosh, it brings back all of the watching of Winnie the Pooh for years and years. So I wanted to ask you how you found that voice and got to be this character.

[1:49] Jake Bazel: Well, thank you very much, first off. Yeah, I mean, this project has really happened in a pretty special way. I think very few jobs actually happen the way that this has kind of come about. I was first asked to sort of hop onto this project in May of 2018 when it was just like a little seed of an idea. It was a meeting between some of the producers and the folks at Disney Theatrical to see if there was sort of anything here. And I was brought into that stage of development, and I just sort of had a few days knowing that I was gonna have to do something Pooh, be in a prototype of the Pooh puppet. So I learned a few phrases that I was able to mimic. I learned his laugh. That's really where it all started.

And then again, fast forward now, I've had about three years, what is it, three years, four years of workshops and readings, and so much listening to the brilliant Jim Cummings and the brilliant Sterling Holloway, and going back and reading and watching and listening as much as I possibly could find. So the answer really with the voice for me is it's just been the gift of having so much time to be able to get it to a place that I'm happy with. So I'm glad it has that effect. That has been the desired effect. It's a voice that everyone knows. It's a much beloved character, obviously. Definitely put in my hours trying to get it right.

[3:14] Mason Bray: Yeah. And would it be possible to get a few examples of your Pooh voice just for everyone listening? I'm sure you get asked that a lot.

[3:20] Jake Bazel: Oh, but of course we could get a few examples. Yes, I do get asked, but you know what? It is always a gift to be able to give the gift of Winnie the Pooh.

[3:38] Mason Bray: Oh my god. That just made my day.

[3:40] Jake Bazel: Oh forget all the mess that happened before we started. He's always in the room. He's always with me.

[3:47] Mason Bray: Yeah. Oh my goodness. But you also do that while using the puppet. So what is your preparation to get into show mode in senses to perform the show every day?

[3:58] Jake Bazel: Or most days?

[4:00] Mason Bray: Most days, yes, most days. What is my preparation? Well, sort of I think a big thing to know when we're talking about preparation for this show is we have quite a few 10 AMs on our schedule because it is a family show. So a big part of my warming up is just waking up and getting my voice to a place where it feels sort of show ready that early in the morning is certainly a part of the warm-up. Generally, I will get into costume and mic at about like 45 to curtain, 45 minutes to curtain, and then I go downstairs in our sort of hallway underneath the stage where I can be as far away from the audience as possible, and I run through like so much of the show vocally just to get it to a place where it sounds right.

It's a delicate voice, so finding the exact right balance, the key to it is just being sort of as vocally warm as I can be. And then while I'm doing that, it's a lot of stretching my back. The puppet is about 40 pounds. So he's a big boy. There's a lot of stuff in fluff there. So it's making sure that you know, my it's a lot of core work, it's a lot of back work, making sure that my body is loose and ready and warmed up to run around with 40 pounds attached to me, singing in my falsetto for an hour.

[5:10] Jake Bazel: Yeah. So having that delicate voice, what tips do you have for people wanting to get into voice acting to make sure it's healthy and sustainable for when they start to create a career out of it?

[5:20] Jake Bazel: Oh gosh. I mean, that is another big question. Thankfully the Pooh voice itself is a very healthy and easily recreatable one. There certainly are voices out there, you know, that can be screamy and yelly and have that rasp to them sometimes referred to as throat rippers in the industry. Thankfully I I'm very blessed and very glad to have a voice here that I'm recreating that is none of those things. But it's you know it's the same as any other person in any other musical. It's a lot of making sure I'm sleeping enough and I'm drinking enough water and there's a lot of throat coat happening backstage. It's sort of all the usual suspects I don't think there's anything that people would be surprised by that I'm doing it really is just I mean it's very Winnie the Pooh of me but it's a lot of sleep and a lot of honey in the show and in real life I guess.

[6:14] Mason Bray: Yes yes art art mimics life and life mimics art.

[6:18] Jake Bazel: Exactly. So in other shows you might have to create characters how do you go into shows to read the script and find what you want to accentuate about their voice?

[6:28] Jake Bazel: Well I mean if we're working sort of in like the animation space which is where I do most of my voice work we will look at we usually get a character breakdown that has you know a drawing of the character an illustration of the character whether that's a fully rendered drawing or just sort of a sketch and the great thing about animation is we're working with characters that are usually pretty they have pretty distinct features. So I will do my best to try to put that character in my body put that character in my face and see sort of what comes up vocally. I very rarely start like with trying to create a voice. You want to create the character and let the voice follow. Put it, put the character in your body and the voice will follow.

I think is probably the best place to start. And from there it's a lot of fine-tuning a lot of other different tools that we're thinking about as voice actors. But generally getting out of your head and getting into your body is a good place to start.

[7:20] Mason Bray: Yeah. And would that also be one of your first tips for people wanting to get into the voice industry? Like when they realize they can do these different voices to find those different jobs is to be confident in yourself.

[7:30] Jake Bazel: Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean if you're someone who is interested in doing animation, there are many wonderful coaches out there, which I am one. Yes. That is my the other side of what I do, not to plug myself too hard here, but I am an animation voiceover coach in my non Winnie the Pooh hours. And usually yeah that process I'll work with a lot of folks a lot of folks who come from the world of theater and generally we start by you know teaching them all of the the sort of the animation toolbox which is there's a lot of overlap with theater. There's a lot of overlap with film, but there are some key differences in there. And then once folks really do have a command of those differences, a command of that toolbox we will work on building a demo, an animation demo, which is really the key to being able to either get an agent or get in the rooms, getting in those casting rooms that can start to get you those animation jobs and get into that side of the industry.

[8:24] Mason Bray: Yeah and while we are at it do you want to plug where people can get those lessons and get you as a coach?

[8:29] Jake Bazel: Oh yes absolutely I will thank you. It's just JakeBazel.com/coaching. So Jake B-A-Z-E-L dot com slash coaching.

[8:41] Jake Bazel: Yeah I love teaching. Teaching has really been I mean I've done a lot of it during these crazy pandemic times. It's great for me because you know, I can do it over Zoom and I'm able to reach students all over the US, all over Canada. It's a really animation is a really great outlet. I love I've always been a character kind of person, even from when I was a kid.

[8:59] Jake Bazel: I was always a character actor, so I feel very at home in animation and I love helping bring that out in other people. It's a lot of fun.

[9:07] Mason Bray: And during that you mentioned during shutdown and during COVID, so has the time off, well, time away helped you get more booking jobs and you can do that virtually or is that still something that you need to go into the studio for?

[9:20] Jake Bazel: Uh yeah, during the pandemic we certainly all moved to more of a home studio style. It was I think right at the beginning of the pandemic, a lot of people thought about voiceover in a new way 'cause it is something you can do safely and remotely. So there was a big spike in interest in commercial voiceover and animation voiceover, which was great because it kept me as a coach. It was such a collaborative time and people were so hungry to have that kind of collaboration that some really fun students and some really great voice actors came out of that swell of people moving to voice over.

[9:57] Mason Bray: Um and how's it been going back into the world of theater to be a voiceover actor and still handle coaching at the same time?

[10:04] Jake Bazel: Going back into theater has been such a gift. We all have such a different perspective and a different appreciation. I mean we were always appreciative to have audiences. But now to be in this spot where you know we lost it for a bit, to be back with audiences and real people in a real room telling a story, it feels that much more precious, I think, every show. And that certainly hasn't been lost on any of us in the company.

[10:34] Mason Bray: Yeah.

[10:34] Jake Bazel: And this show specifically, Winnie the Pooh is such a hug of a show. It's about friendship and it's about coming together as those stories always have been. So in a lot of ways, it feels sort of like the perfect time to be bringing these characters back and bringing them into a space where they're in the same room with people who have loved them since they were children. Through all the craziness that we've been through, this feels like a really beautiful and poetic time to be telling these stories for sure.

[11:04] Mason Bray: Definitely. Um and on your website you listed that you are also a director as well as many other things. So I wanted to know what type of projects you have directed and what you might want to direct more in the future.

[11:14] Jake Bazel: Oh yeah. Well, one of the first shows, one of the first theater shows I was involved in when I moved to the city was The Very Hungry Caterpillar Show, which was created and directed by Jonathan Rockefeller, who is one of the producers on Pooh, and the director on Pooh. And that show and that project ended up being so much more of a gift than I thought it was gonna be. I initially signed a contract in like it was the end of 2015, it was like Christmas 2015, and I think it was supposed to be like a month-long run in early 2016, and then it just kept on getting extended and extended, and then we moved theaters and closed for a bit and reopened in a different space, and then we ended up going out to Seattle with the show, and it's just sort of been this project that has continued to come back in my life and snowball in this beautiful way.

I think I've done that show now over like 700 times or something crazy. But when it was set to go out on its first national tour, I believe it was the first national tour, Jonathan handed the reins to me to direct that. So I've directed the tour a couple times and they did a Japanese tour that I put up as well. And then I've gone out to a few different regional theaters around the country to either direct or puppet direct, essentially get the show up on its feet. And that's been again such a gift. Such a who could have ever seen that coming when I signed that contract for four weeks back in early 2016.

[12:43] Mason Bray: That's amazing. Um hopping back to voiceover and stuff like that. I know I'm hopping all over the place.

[12:48] Jake Bazel: We can hop.

[12:52] Mason Bray: I like to hop. What have your audition processes been like for Winnie the Pooh and all your other voice acting and puppetry gigs?

[13:02] Jake Bazel: Yeah, I mean, they're all certainly pretty different from each other. I was lucky with Pooh that I didn't really audition because we moved from that first meeting that I was talking about to table readings and then a handful of workshops on the show. So, in some ways, I didn't I never actually fully auditioned, but also it sort of felt like I was auditioning for a full, you know, three years there as we continued to build the show. Every time we did another workshop, it felt a bit like an audition. So no audition, but also the longest audition of my life. With other puppet stuff and other TV stuff, what's great about the puppetry community in New York and all over, but I think you know, I can really speak to the New York crowd.

We are a small and mighty group of people. There's not many of us. So it's a really sort of different relationship that I think that we have with auditioning than probably most actors do, because it tends to be the same 30 or 40 people going up for most jobs. And if you don't get it, you know one of your good friends is probably gonna get it and they're gonna be perfect for the show. And you know, it's the right guy or girl for it. So I'm certainly grateful for that. It seems to be a pretty healthy relationship with auditioning. Every audition feels a little bit like a family reunion.

[14:24] Mason Bray: Which is great because I hate auditioning. I'm not one of my strongest suits.

[14:30] Jake Bazel: Yeah.

[14:31] Mason Bray: Me neither. Auditioning frightens me so much.

[14:34] Jake Bazel: Oh my gosh.

[14:35] Mason Bray: Yeah, you're not alone. It's an interesting thing, isn't it?

[14:39] Jake Bazel: Hmm.

[14:40] Mason Bray: Yeah.

[14:41] Jake Bazel: So I have asked this, I just hit my fifty episode mark, but do you prefer the education that you got maybe in acting or voice acting, or the experience that you've gotten working on all the different shows?

[14:53] Jake Bazel: So I never went to a university for acting. I kind of got lucky and was I had an opportunity to sort of just jump right into work with a gig. And while that was certainly scary at the time, just jumping in like that and taking that risk, I am certainly now grateful that I did that. Certainly the education that I've gotten on the different shows that I've done has been invaluable. So yeah, I think the university route, you know, it wasn't right for me, but it's incredibly valuable for a lot of people. It really is hard in the acting world and in the theater world and in the freelance artist world. You've gotta, I think, really listen to your gut on that one.

[15:41] Mason Bray: Yeah.

[15:41] Jake Bazel: Yeah, there's no right answer. I don't think, you know, for me, university wasn't right, but it's different for everybody. And every path is valid. I mean, all of my friends who work in voice acting and in puppetry and in theater now, everyone has such a different path. And it all got us to pretty much the same place. So you gotta follow what's right for you for sure.

[16:00] Mason Bray: And I know it might get old for people listening to hear that for the 50th time, but I get so fascinated every time I ask that, oh my gosh.

[16:07] Jake Bazel: Yeah.

[16:08] Mason Bray: So coming out of the pandemic, what was your first Broadway show or just show in general back in the theater?

[16:14] Jake Bazel: Oh in the audience my first show back well I saw the Disney did a concert back in like July 2021, I wanna say at the New Amsterdam. And that was a really fun night. Cause at that point I knew I was doing Winnie the Pooh, but no one else knew I was doing Winnie the Pooh. So I got to live my Disney nerd dreams at that show. That was a really special night just being back in a theater for the first time in the New Amsterdam is such a gorgeous space. It really felt like a beautiful communal experience. And then my first Broadway show back I think was Hadestown, which was also stunning and gorgeous and a wonderful night which was just like full of sobbing. I was just crying the whole time. All of my friends that I was with we were all just a mess the entire time for sure.

[17:05] Mason Bray: Yeah. Well is there any other things that you want to add any tips or advice or anything you want to add before we wrap up?

[17:12] Jake Bazel: Tips or advice. Uh no I think I think I've covered it. I think just you know it's the theme of the day apparently it's just you do you. Everyone just gotta follow their own path. I certainly I mean when I was your age, I think I was very eager to get going and jump in and start working and now and I'm you know we just and that was my path and I'm really glad that it was. And since I've learned I think quite a bit about patience and I'm grateful that I've learned about that, like it's all gonna be okay. Whatever path you're on, it's gonna be okay. You're gonna get there when you're supposed to get there.

[17:47] Mason Bray: Yeah.

[17:47] Jake Bazel: That's amazing. Well thank you so much for being here and taking the time to chat. This was amazing and I can't wait to get to New York at some time to see Winnie the Pooh.

[17:56] Jake Bazel: Yes, absolutely. Thank you, Mason.