Cherie B. Tay – Queer, AAPI & Gender Non-Conforming Voiceovers

Link to full profile: bluewavevoiceover.com/voices/cherie-b-tay

Email: cheriebtayvo@gmail.com

When you’re looking for an Asian American & Pacific Islander (AAPI) and LGBTQ+ voiceover talent who can deliver your voiceovers with a warm and velvet smooth energy, look no further than queer, gender non-conforming voice actor Cherie B. Tay! Cherie (she/they) brings a powerfully puissant energy to every read and is proud to lend their youthful, compassionate sound to progressive causes.

Tell us a little about your broadcast-quality home studio. Where is it? What kind of equipment do you have? What do you like about it?

I built a custom recording studio/booth in my living room in Brooklyn.

I have a Synco D2 shotgun mic on a boom arm, a Scarlett 2i2 interface, and a Macbook Pro that I have to put an ice pack under for live sessions.

I love that I can record music and VO in 1 booth. I also have professional monitors above my keyboard so I have options about listening to playback.

I have an entire blog post about it!
https://www.cheriebtayvo.com/blog/cheriebooth2020

What’s one thing that most people don’t know about you?

I used to be VERY quiet and shy. It took me a long time to find my voice and trust it. I also get intensely focused on things and want to be great at it immediately. Current obsession is Beat Saber on the Oculus.

How did you get into voiceover work?

I’ve wanted to do VO since 2010. I started chatting with people in Philadelphia about the industry and picked their brains about it. But theatre took over. I went on the road with a show, then kept working. Finally in 2019, I was working on a long running Broadway show, and André De Shields and Amber Gray kept telling me that I needed to get into VO work, and I listened. I had a LOT of help/advice starting from other VO cast members at my show.

Do you remember what your first voiceover job was?

I’ve done unpaid live announce and corporate VO work just from working as a stage manager on those events. My first paid job was playing a robot scientist on an audio drama podcast!

Do you remember the first political voiceover job that you did?

I’ve done a lot of theatre funding related political VOs since Broadway has shutdown.

What has been your favorite voiceover project to date?

I played a non-binary platypus in an animation!

I want to give back to what my younger self did not have/see represented. It’s so important to me to pave the way for the younger generation and show them that it will be okay to love and be themselves.

Why do you think voiceover will be an important part of political advertising in upcoming elections?

I think VO will always be important to political advertising. We have to represent those who do not have voices and make the world a better place. Helping candidates who I believe in is very important to me.

What issues would you like to see at the center of the Democratic platform for upcoming elections?

Healthcare, Equal rights & protection for women and LGBTQ+ people, Global Warming, Economic and Social Justice.

What is your biggest voiceover pet peeve?

People thinking that it’s “easy” and that they “just have to have a good voice”. It takes a lot of work and investment in equipment, classes, coaching, learning, and time.

If you could tell political clients one thing that would help you do your job better, or help them get what they want faster – what would that one thing be?

Give the full script once it’s done, get all the pickups from everyone who has input, then give the full pickup list back if needed (instead of one change at a time).

What advice do you have for aspiring voiceover talents that want to work in the political arena?

Keep learning! Keep going!

What hobbies do you have outside of your voiceover work?

Photography, Music (ukulele), Technology, Videography, Theatre, Cooking.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

I have a full press page with a press kit! https://www.cheriebtayvo.com/press

If you’d like to book Cherie B. Tay on your next political voiceover project, please visit their profile here and get in touch!

Allegra Verlezza – Non-Binary & Queer Voiceovers

Link to full profile: bluewavevoiceover.com/voices/allegra-verlezza

Email: allegra@allegraverlezza.com

When you’re looking for a non-binary and queer voiceover talent who can deliver your political spot with authenticity and passion, look no further than millennial voice actor, Allegra Verlezza! Allegra (they/she) is a proud member of the LGBTQIA+ community and as a genderfluid person, feels comfortable and affirmed voicing roles for women and non-binary folks. They are committed to amplifying progressive messages that advance real, meaningful change.

Tell us a little about your broadcast-quality home studio. Where is it? What kind of equipment do you have? What do you like about it?

My home studio is a creative hybrid of a closet booth and a free-standing blanket booth in my Brooklyn apartment. My closet and its doors are completely lined with 2 inch thick foam panels and I situate myself and my mic between the open closet doors. I have Producer’s Choice sound-absorbing blankets running along a ceiling track outside of the closet that act as curtains and quietly enclose my booth. As for light, I have a dreamy curtain of twinkle lights behind me which makes it feel like the coolest blanket fort ever.

In terms of equipment, I have a Rode NT1 mic, Solid State Logic SSL2 audio interface, and a computer monitor hooked up to my Macbook Air that sits right outside of my booth. I found these nifty mobile, adjustable desks that are meant for close-quarters living in a college dorm (not unlike living in NYC) and I converted two of them into mobile booth desks. All of my tech, including my iPad for reading scripts, either sits on these desks or are clamped to the sides so none of my equipment has to be fixed to one spot. Most of the time I stand so I can access my full range of wacky and dramatic movement but if I have a longer session, I can easily pop a stool into the booth since all my equipment is mobile.

I love this accessible and malleable quality about my booth because it means I always have the room to move and be physically present as an actor. What I don’t like about it? Well, it’s situated next to a window that looks out over a loooong row of backyards so I could do without the trees knocking against my building, music blasting, or the flocks of birds that seem to run formation drills every afternoon.

Update: my cat has discovered that he can claw open my blanket curtains and zoom around me. Send help.

What’s one thing that most people don’t know about you?

My first foray into performance was through dance! I grew up in a family of modern dancers, who specialized in making dance accessible to people of abilities and minds. I spent many years studying modern dance and ballet and I still love to dance – especially at queer dance parties! This early exposure to diverse types of movement and just being comfortable with wiggling my limbs really instilled in me a deep presence and comfort with moving my body. I totally bring this connection to dance and my body into my booth because as we know, EVERYTHING influences the voice and vocal performance and that definitely includes moving and feeling alive and activated in my body.

How did you get into voiceover work?

Buckle in. From being a cartoon-obsessed kid to a high school theater dork to an adult actor who convinces all their friends to watch the latest animated shows – especially the growing number of cartoons with LGBTQ+ rep – I LOVE vocal performance! I always have. It’s just…its own kind of magic when an actor breathes life into a bunch of moving lines and color. I wasn’t always able to name and celebrate this passion though. The person who gave me the confidence to own my continued love of cartoons as an adult is Rebecca Sugar, cartoonist/artist/showrunner extraordinaire and creator of Steven Universe. And a fellow bisexual and non-binary creative! Watching the literal slew of diverse LGBTQ+ characters in her show, I saw myself for the first time in a cartoon. Listening to interviews where Sugar speaks so unapologetically about her lifelong love of animation was a really healing experience for me as a young person who (is this not ridiculous?) was put down a lot for loving these animated shows that quite literally saved my life. I even got into cosplay!

SO. This beautiful moment of self-actualization along with still loving acting and being miserable at my first job out of college made me think, “well, why can’t I try voice acting and being in cartoons?” I started researching classes and then the real catalyst was a colleague of mine who saw me LIGHT UP with curiosity and joy when she mentioned that her sister worked full-time in animation. That colleague connected me to her sister who connected me to someone else in the industry (are you following?), who generously took the time to have coffee with me and answer alllll my questions about getting into voice acting and children’s media. I walked out of that midtown coffee shop, whipped out my phone, and signed up for my first voiceover class.

And you know what I found? There are SO MANY awesome types of voiceover! I hopped from class to class, discovering different genres – like political! – and jumped head-first into the incredible world of voiceover. The short answer – I took a class. The longish answer – a bunch of people paid it forward by being their full authentic selves and generously fostering other people’s joy.

What is your biggest voiceover pet peeve?

My biggest pet peeve in voiceover is when listeners assume a voice of a certain identity sounds a certain way. As a queer genderfluid person, this becomes personal when it comes to voice actors under the non-binary umbrella. The voiceover industry has made a lot of progress in terms of diverse casting but unfortunately, there are still a lot of expectations that a “non-binary voice” is a monolith and should “sound androgynous” or “neutral” or… non-gendered? My voice is full of gender! A big, colorful, messy painting of gender. And I “sound non-binary” because I am non-binary. Even though my voice isn’t mid-low range or what people often deem “androgynous-sounding,” I sound genderfluid because I am genderfluid. And there are non-binary voices that do have those qualities and that’s fantastic! It just shouldn’t be an assumed standard that is frankly grounded in patriarchal, cis-centric views of gender.

This automatic coupling of certain vocal qualities with certain gender identities (i.e. women’s voices sound like X and men’s voices sound like Y) fails to realize a beautiful truth: just as sexuality and gender identity are diverse spectrums, so is voice. And just like we’re unlearning so many things ingrained in us from the oppressive structures in our society, we’re unlearning assumptions and taught biases about what a certain identity’s voice sounds like. I encourage folks, in all fields but especially in voiceover, to not limit ourselves with rigid ideas about what a certain gender identity sounds like. What any identity sounds like, including women and men! Let’s embrace the fact that anyone can quite literally sound like anything. After all, my biggest voiceover LOVE is that this community is so supportive and this craft is all about being fully and authentically YOU.

What advice do you have for talents who want to do political voiceover?

Well, to follow up on the above, BE YOU. Be fully, freely, totally you. This advice goes for all genres of voiceover but especially when it comes to political work. (My gender studies degree is screaming everything is political! But let’s talk genre.) Go inward. Who are you and what are your fights? Go outward towards community. Who are you in solidarity with and who are you fighting for? Bring all of this specificity to your reads, even if it’s not you explicitly giving literal words to this. Bring the feeling, the passion, the urgency, the compassion, the humanity.

What hobbies do you have outside of your voiceover work?

Fiber arts! I’ve loved knitting ever since I begged my mom at the age of 8 to buy me a pair of needles and the COOLEST rainbow tie-dye yarn I found at Michaels (#CanonicallyQueer). I knitted throughout childhood – my mom still uses this lumpy eyeglasses holder I made for her, bless her heart – and after a several-year pause, I picked up a pair of needles again when I was feeling quite low in my early twenties. And my goodness does knitting do wonders for anxiety and depression! I love to be able to create something out of nothing with my hands. It occupies my busy mind and is a perfect way to relax my voice after a long day of auditions.

If you’d like to book Allegra Verlezza on your next political voiceover project, please visit their profile here and get in touch!

Rosi Amador – Hispanic Female Voiceovers in English and Spanish

Link to full profile: bluewavevoiceover.com/voices/rosi-amador/

Email: rosi@amadorbilingualvoiceovers.com

When you’re looking for a female voiceover talent who can deliver your political spot flawlessly in both English and Spanish, look no further than Hispanic bilingual voiceover talent, Rosi Amador. Rosi actually comes from a family of bilingual voiceover artists. We’re proud to have her husband Brian and son Zia on our Blue Wave Voiceover roster as well. Rosi is also able to deliver copy in English with an authentic Hispanic accent. We know that the Latinx community represents a large part of the electorate and is a huge target for Democratic candidates and ballot initiatives, so using a confident female voice like Rosi can authentically help get your message into the right ears!

Tell us a little about your broadcast-quality home studio. Where is it? What kind of equipment do you have? What do you like about it?

We’re lucky to live in a lovely, solidly built 1850’s home in a quiet neighborhood in Cambridge MA where we set up a professional home studio to record our music in the 1990’s. In 2009 we vamped it up for voiceovers. We’re 100% Remote-Ready with SourceConnect Pro, ipDTL, phone patch or Zoom/Skype available for our clients to listen in or direct in real time.  We use various topnotch microphones including a Warm Audio WA-87, CAD E100S, Audio Technica AT4040, AKG Perception 220, Shure SM-7B and AKG Perception 120, an Apogee Duet 2 preamp/interface. Our preferred DAW is Twisted Wave but we also use Digital Performer 9, Logic Pro and Reaper recording software.

What’s one thing that most people don’t know about you?

Many of our voiceover clients may not know that we’re also professional Latin musicians. In fact we toured for 27 years prior to choosing to move into our full-time voiceover career in 2009. I am our Latin band Sol y Canto‘s lead singer and bongo player/percussionist and my husband Brian is our composer/arranger and a fabulous Spanish guitarist if I do say so myself. I am passionate about doing improvisational singing these days and am furiously studying it online during this pandemic so that I can come out scatting like Ella Fitzgerald (I wish).

How did you get into voiceover work?

A music colleague and fan asked us to record children’s stories and eLearning modules for Scholastic in the early 90’s and we thoroughly enjoyed it. A few years later the hospital where I gave birth to our twins caught wind that I was a Latin singer with a following and asked me to record a testimonial in both English and Spanish as a TV and radio spot. I went into my first pro voiceover studio downtown in Boston and recorded with several producers listening in and directing. It went great and I was hooked. Right then and there I decided I would pursue bilingual voiceovers as a way of using my voice creatively moving forward that didn’t require that I tour constantly away from my infant twins once they started school. I recorded part-time as I built up my client base and went full-time in 2009. I love it!

Do you remember the first voiceover job you ever did?

The first spot was for the Hospital I gave birth in – St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Boston. It was a bilingual spot about what good care they took of me and my premature twins. All true and very personal. I did it pro-bono to help the hospital and their wonderful NICU nurses and doctors.

What has been your favorite voiceover project – political or otherwise – to date?

I had the privilege of being selected to record the overdubbed English voice for the fearless indigenous leader Nemonte Nenquimo in “Global Goal: Unite for our Future,” an internationally broadcast documentary and concert. It calls on citizens to tackle global injustices by using our collective voice to drive change for everyone, everywhere. This online event was produced by Global Citizen, a social action platform for a global generation that aims to solve the world’s biggest challenges and promotes social change. Here it is:

Why do you think voiceover is an important part of political advertising this season?

What issues would you like to see at the center of the Democratic platform for this year’s election?

What is your biggest voiceover pet peeve?

When clients send me scripts in Spanish that were translated by Google Translate or by someone who is not a professional translator and they are literally translated in a way that no Latinx person would ever speak. It happens more often that I care to say, and puts me in the uncomfortable position of having to point this out to the client and help them fix these problems. I will not voice anything that is not written in proper Spanish, so I’m happy to help with this, but it’s not how I prefer to use my time. I do my best to educate each client so that when they return they’ll have a pro to send the script to in advance. It’s a win/win.

If you could tell political voiceover clients one thing that would help you do your job better, or help them get what they want faster – what would that one thing be?

I frequently record bilingual versions of spots and very often the Spanish is too long for the :30 or :60 time frame. There are 25-30% more words in Spanish than in English, so if the creative team hires a pro translator who understands and practices the script to see if it’ll fit into the amount of time that’s available, by the time the script gets to me it’s good to go. It is usually well written and I don’t have to rush (making it sound like a used car sales ad!) This makes my job way easier and more fun! I love doing political spots for causes and folks I believe in when I get the opportunity.

What advice do you have for talents who want to do political voiceover?

Study with knowledgeable voice acting coaches or an acting coach, listen to political ads and learn about the different styles so you’re fluent in them and will know what approach to take when you get a script.

What hobbies do you have outside of your voiceover work?

I’m a longtime yoga practitioner and I meditate daily. My husband and I also do a vocal improvisation every morning after we meditate together. It’s a great way to start off the day before I exercise. And I LOVE to travel, when it’s allowed! Can’t wait.

Any final thoughts?

It’s an honor for me to be able to represent the Latinx community in my political voiceover work. I am frequently hired to be the voice of an immigrant, a business owner, or to voice the spot of a Latinx political candidate who is trying to make things better for my community. There is no higher honor than this one, whether it’s in English, Spanish or Hispanic-accented English.

If you’d like to book Rosi Amador on your next political voiceover project, please visit her profile here and get in touch!