Edwin Perez strongly believes that every person possesses a unique narrative worth telling, and the ability to share that narrative can inspire meaningful change in both oneself and others. Recognized for his diverse roles across many platforms, he emphasizes the importance of preparation and relaxation, suggesting that mastering one's breath can alleviate anxiety and enhance performance.

Storytelling transcends the boundaries of performance art, becoming a fundamental part of human connection and understanding. Edwin shares insights into how being fully engaged in the moment can enrich the storytelling experience. Sharing from the heart to genuinely connect with another is critical; true storytelling requires a leap of faith.

Takeaways:

• The essence of storytelling lies in its ability to inspire and evoke change.
• Presence is a critical component of effective storytelling, allowing authenticity to shine through.
• Fear often hinders our ability to embrace creativity and engage with our true potential.
• Engaging in storytelling requires a leap of faith, embracing uncertainty as a path to discovery.
• The journey of storytelling is not merely about performance but about connection and shared experiences.

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Ignite Voice, Inc.
• Hell on Wheels
• My Fave Arrow
• Supergirl
• Lucifer

Your voice is your superpower. Use it. Welcome to Ignite My Voice Becoming unstoppable. Powered by Ignite Voice, Inc. The podcast where voice meets purpose and stories ignite change.

Deep conversations with amazing guests, storytellers, speakers, and change makers.

It's intrinsic to our nature. Think about the oldest stories or cave paintings.

Our guest today is someone you've likely seen on your screen more than once.

Edwin Perez has built an incredible career as an actor with roles in Hell on Wheels, My Fave Arrow, Supergirl, Lucifer, and dozens of films and TV movies.

He's not just a performer, he's a storyteller who knows how to move between the stage, the studio, and the screen with authenticity.

And what makes Edwin fascinating isn't just the credits. It's the way he thinks about presence.

This is more than acting. This is more than storytelling. He inspires each of us to take our own leap of faith.

Here's our conversation with Edwin Perez.

Right now, I'm teaching. I've got one client that I'm coaching through public speaking.

They just want to make a change in careers, and they want to get better at being in front of people, interviewing for jobs and just kind of general life. And so you just. That ability to take in breath, it does a couple of things. A, it relaxes you.

It brings in much needed oxygen to your brain so you can think properly.

Thinking's good, right? It's helpful, you know, on occasion.

...but it's like to anybody, I just go, look, take. Before you say something, take three breaths, right? Let them out. Now your body's prepped and relaxed.

You've given yourself enough time to think through something and proceed with that found relaxed state.

Prep and relax.

Yeah, prep and relax.

Because you can't work with any material in front of you or your own voice if you're not prepped and relaxed and using your breath properly just makes all the difference.

Well, and you struggle. You struggle to have the energy to. Whether you're doing a speech or whether you're just having a conversation.

You know, suddenly start getting down to this, and then, like, you wonder why you're. You're feeling so constrained or stressed and.

Then that, you know, you're pushing your voice. You're not authentic. You're starting to be in your head. You're worried about how you sound, how you look. You're an actor.

Yeah.

You're worried about sound. And look, not worried, but you're conscious of other people may be worried.

Yeah. And so if you make. If. If you make these things a habit of just taking in that breath, right. Learning to project, and it becomes second nature.

You don't have to think about those things anymore. And I think I always say to people, it's like, trust that the instrument is there. I mean, this is why we go to class. This is why we train.

This is why we practice. So that when you go to do the job, the tools are already there.

You've been doing it long enough that you can just kind of let them do the work, and you can enjoy the ride of performing.

And I love that you said your body's an instrument because you can fine tune an instrument, you can change your instrument, you can practice an instrument. And when you're working with your instrument, if you let that go and flow, it comes out naturally because you can trust yourself.

Yeah, that's a huge difference.

It is a huge difference. I think the difficulty is that, you know, it's easy and it's hard.

When you play a guitar, for example, you can pick it up, sit, play a favorite song, you know, work it out until it flows the way that you want it to flow, or you learn the song, whatever it is, right? And then you put it down. It's away, right? With your body and your breath, your voice, it's always here.

It's hard to put it down.

It's hard to put it down. Right? But it's hard to engage in it because it feels like work. It's. It's like. I don't know. You know what? I've never gone snowboarding.

Even though we live in a place where we have one of the best resorts and slopes for snowboarding and skiing. It's like. Because it's right there in my backyard, and I go, I'll go next time. It's right there, you know, but you have.

It's hard, and it's hard, but you got to make a concerted effort to go and do it and, you know, practice something is the same thing. You know, maybe not as sexy as going out and snowboarding or skiing, but, like, practicing your vocal work.

You can do it in the car on your commute to work. You know, it's nice to see you online singing. Well, yeah, I mean, you do it already, like, in the car. You sit there and you sing along to songs.

Might as well practice something.

But it's also nice to see it as an instrument so that it can change. I think a lot of people don't recognize that, like, I'm born with this. I'm stuck with it. It's who I am. Nothing I can do.

But that's far from the truth, isn't it?

100%. One of the big things that I get a lot of people come to me for to learn voiceover, the first thing.

Everybody comes in because they want to do animation, right? That's the first thing you associate with voiceover animation. I want to learn, but it's like, oh, but I'm concerned.

I'm worried I don't have 100 different voices that I can do. I was like, well, you actually already have probably more voices than you think. You know, we can already look at three.

I was like, your talking voice. Something a little bit higher up here and then something down low, right? You have three voices right away, right there.

And then when you place that voice where it goes how you.

Right.

And suddenly we start creating more and more voices. And I was like, it's an instrument that you fine tune and that. Who's that? The range that you can expand as well.

And the more that you work at it, the more depth that you find in it, the more range that you can find in it, you know?

And the diaphragm's a muscle, you know, if you can work out your abs and your pecs and your biceps, you can work out your diaphragm.

Yeah.

So anyone with the right tools can be genius at this. But fear holds us back a lot, doesn't it?

Fear holds us back all the time whenever we want to engage with something that matters. Right. Like you guys mentioned, right? You want to get it right. You sort of self monitor yourself all the time because you want to get it right.

You don't want to mess up, you don't want to screw up. But as a creative, that's the journey that you have to take. That's the leap of faith you got to take. Because it isn't math.

It's not, you know, one plus one equals two every single time. It's like, oh, well, if I mess it up, that means I'm wrong. It's like it's not in the creative process.

Whether you're acting, you're painting, you're learning a song. It's about discovering and jumping into the unknown.

And you walk the talk. Something that I know about you now that I didn't know about you when I met you. We were on stage together. I was Mrs. Robinson to your Benjamin.

That was fun. You are a film TV actor. And I didn't know at the time that you had never been on stage before.

That's right. Yeah.

And you walked into that theater, didn't tell anybody, and you walked. The talk of facing your fear, how did that go for you?

Well, it was interesting because I didn't. I had always wanted to do something on stage and I started in film and tv. So you sort of get used to working in front of the camera.

You get to work in that mode of, you know, more contained, more subtle. Yeah, subtle, you know, performance front of the camera.

But going on stage, the fear of going on stage is that you have to perform for two hours straight. There is no cut, there is no reset. Let's try that again. Oh, I messed up my line. And just relax.

We'll come back and do that again.

That's right. Right. So you just have to carry that performance for two hours. And that seems like a very daunting task.

Especially when you, you pick up a play and it's just like wall to wall words and not like a script, which is like, you know, a scene maybe is three pages, four pages, a long scene, you know, and it's dialogue that's broken out between action on stage. It's all just go right, line, line, line, line, back and forth, back and forth as we're doing what we're doing up there.

So that those things were scary to do.

And I didn't want to say that I was in film when I walked into audition for the part because I have found in the past that there's sort of this stigma of like, you're a film and TV actor that means you're not going to be able to project your voice.

That means you're going, you're used to cutting between scenes or whatever stigma there is from people who think that you have bad habits from film and TV that don't translate to the stage. And so I just said nothing. I was like, I'm just gonna go, I'm gonna do the thing so brave.

And then just go for it and jump into the deep end and figure it out as I go.

And you did.

And thankfully it work. I would look at the stage and all my nerves would just start coming out because you hear the murmur of the crowd. And I was just so nervous.

And I stand back there and I just go, why? Why do I do this to myself?

I know that feeling.

Why do I do this?

I always looked over and to the right, there's the exit sign to the. We could just go. Nobody would know if I just left right in the middle.

It's true. But once you jump in and you get that first line out and everything is just rolling. You lean back, you trust that you did the work.

If you flub something, keep going, you know, and it works. And nothing is perfect. But that's the beauty of it all, is that in that imperfection, in that unknown, something wonderful can happen.

I just think that's just like life, too. I mean, you jump into the fray, and you don't know what's going to happen. It's an adventure, but that takes a.

Lot of faith, you know? Like, I remember stand up. I remember, like, you were talking just.

Before the curtain opens.

I remember just, why do I do this to myself? Right? And then you get out there and you let. Let whatever is going to happen, happen.

But that takes a lot of confidence and faith to be able to stand there and think, I'll adjust. I'll be okay. Yeah, right?

Yeah. I mean, especially for standup, I'm like, you really want to test out what you're made out of? Go. Go and do stand up. Because comedy is unforgiving.

It's either funny or it's not.

You want.

You want 1 plus 1 equals 2 in performance? Get out there, nail that timing, get that joke and make it land. A very good comedian can probably make something unfunny be funny.

You know what I've learned, though, through all my different performances is, yeah, you can learn. You can learn the format in that particular environment. But what goes through all of it, besides storytelling, is faith.

You've got to, in that moment, just keep moving forward, right?

Have faith that it's gonna hold, that it's gonna work out.

You've gotta have that mind control and that belief, you know, and not let those negative thoughts interfere.

What's the worst that's gonna happen? Like, realistically, he'll die when Edwin. I'm gonna die, collapse on the stage. That was over curtain.

But then, even then, it's like, all right, so you die.

Yeah, it's over. So what?

Done. What do you got to worry about?

That's true.

The rest of us left on the stage.

It's for the rest of the people and the players on the stage. The audience, you know, whomever's got to come and pick up the body, they're got to worry about this stuff, not you.

I had one actor fall off the stage.

On one of the runs. My pants tore open in the back. Do you remember that?

I don't.

So I'm out there with Mariko, who is playing her daughter. And it's the scene where we're supposed to go out on a date. And so it's just the two of us up on stage.

And I have this very quick change from the previous scene. So I run to one side of the stuff. We finish the previous scene, go to one side of the stage, come back around, get dressed on the other side.

I go down to tie my shoelaces. And I hadn't like buckled my belt quite yet. I was like rushing through, trying to put everything on. And I go down to tie my shoelaces.

My pants drop at the same time. And so now I split the back of the pants all along the back seam. I tie my shoes, I know what's happened.

I get back up, I buckle my belt and I was like, I gotta go, I gotta get up there.

Nothing you can do.

And all I could think about was like, I just gotta keep my back away from the audience. I can't in any capacity turn my back to the audience so they'll see the tear.

So I get out there and I play the entire scene and aware, you know, that I had to be like, at a particular angle and it's like, that's interesting. Blocking, blocking just carried the scene through and then that was it. And got off stage.

But you have to do what you.

Have to do and you gotta do what you gotta do.

And in that play, I had to go on stage nude. And I've never done nude before on stage in front of everybody. And that was a real test of my faith as well.

Yeah, we had some interesting things happen in that show.

Absolutely. And so. Right. But nothing happened, right? Nothing happened. We have great stories, we can laugh about them.

And even in the moment, after they're done, you're just like, wow, I can't believe that just happened. Right.

But you know, we're back to fear, we're back to faith. We're back to, how do you keep that frontal cortex online so you can keep thinking in the moment. Right.

Because if you go in a fight or flight, you're doomed.

It's breath, isn't it? It's part of.

It's part of breath is keeping yourself calm. It's also being involved in what's happening. So this is the next step, at least for me.

When I'm coaching people, I'm like, you have to be involved in this story that's happening. You have to imagine so hard that you can't help but be pulled into the imaginary world story that you're telling.

That's really it, you know, that you're just so involved in that imaginary world that self monitoring goes away. That all that self consciousness goes away because you're just living the story as it unfolds and whatever happens in it.

Yeah.

You're present and whatever happens, it just becomes part of the story.

Well, it's life.

Yeah, it is.

Yeah.

That is life, isn't it?

Yeah. Yeah.

The way that I, at least I approach that works for me. I try to make those lines thoughts instead of being lines, because lines are daunting.

Memorizing a speech or some kind of something that's, you know, that's just. It's not information, it's not data. It's storytelling. Right. So if you memorize the lines as a story, you know, it becomes easier to retain.

And then as you get comfortable with what the sequence of the story is, then you can go in and maybe delve a little bit more in the details. And you build and you build and you build until you know your lines as they're written, you know, and move forward from there.

Because there's definitely moments that, I mean, that I've gone through where I've been given scenes that are just exposition or information dumps that have to happen in a given scene. And so those things don't necessarily follow that they're written to explain something to the audience watching.

Not necessarily, because it makes sense as a conversation. Sometimes a real person thinking.

Yeah.

And so the only way that I can like memorize that stuff where it goes from non sequitur information to more information is to make it, at least for me, in those moments, is to make it a thought process of the characters discovering bits and pieces of a puzzle.

Let's say that's really interesting. And you can take that concept and use that to be a public speaker as well.

Yeah.

You're making a presentation, you have a story to tell. It doesn't have to be word perfect because the audience doesn't know what's going to come next. We think, oh, I missed that word. But they don't know.

So if you're feeling good and comfortable and confident and like you say, you've done the work, then you tell the story and you let the story be.

Yeah. And again, it's like if you're. If it's film and tv, we're just gonna cut, you know, we're gonna take it again.

Or if they love the performance but the line wasn't 100%, you're gonna catch it in ADR afterwards somewhere else.

Yes, we want to nail it in the first go, but when you take away that pressure of like, oh my gosh, I have to just be right every single time you get rid of all that stuff that constrains you from getting involved in the imaginary story, being present, taking away these pressures, these things that we want to throw on ourselves.

And they're judgments, really. They're judgments.

Yeah.

You're freeing yourself from that judgment. Yeah, yeah.

Right. It's. It's not about getting it right. It's about getting involved in what you're doing. I mean, that's why I became an actor, because I wanted to.

To play, to be involved in these imaginary stories and have these fantastic adventures. Right.

So why am I sitting back, judging myself, trying to get it right instead of enjoying what I'm doing and have faith that the training that I've done, all that work that I've engaged with, has had a result? Why am I paying so much money for classes, going in there, training every single day to then come over to set or stage and be afraid?

Beat myself up.

Yeah. Beat myself up for what? Instead of going, I did the work, now I need to enjoy that. Yeah. Those efforts.

That's where creativity lies. True.

When you've done the work, then you can release that, and whatever comes out as part of the experience, part of the adventure, you're not so locked into the perfectionism of it. And that's where we have that relationship to the audience. That's where we can build.

When you're really invested and present in the story, no matter how that story takes place, whether it's a podcast or you're making a presentation at a meeting, or you're on stage or on film, that's so freeing.

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's ingrained in us, obviously, from school. You go to school, you got to get the answer right.

You have to get the questions right so that you can pass the test. Getting it right is just the way we grow up. But when we jump into this imaginary world, it really isn't about any of those things.

And we have to sort of let go of some of that stuff and just be free to play. But it is a mindset, and it's something that if we want to do it, we need to begin to change the way that we think about it. This is not normal life.

This is not regular life. This is the imaginary. This is storytelling. This is the fantastic, fantastical, whatever you want to call it. Right.

It doesn't play with the same rules.

Although I'm thinking maybe it's better to bring those rules into our life, because if we're going to be authentic as a person, you can't base who you are on how others react. Or if I'm going to be creative with my life, I can't follow the same pattern everybody else is following.

I know society puts that pressure on us, but I'm thinking if we brought your thinking into our everyday life, we're going to live better lives, you know?

Sure. I mean, it's about getting rid of expectations. Right.

When we create expectations, we narrow down the field to what makes us happy, to what makes us successful.

Even though happiness and success can exist in all sorts of ways, you know, it doesn't have to be this, like, this is the only way that I'm going to do it. So when we create these crazy expectations about ourselves, we fall short or we stress ourselves trying to get there.

Well, we put ourselves in that little box, don't we?

Yeah.

That in theory, everybody's supposed to fit in. Nah, blow it up.

Yeah.

I came onto the stage and the lights were on and I just looked out into the audience and I stood on the stage and it was all super quiet and I just took a deep breath and I was just like, this is it. I love this because in that moment, what I felt was the potential, this wonderful potential for something cool to happen.

It's hard to quantify, but it's that sense of, like, before you go on a holiday, your imagination is already brimming with what's going to happen, what wonderful things can happen.

And that idea of carrying into life, into the world, and engaging with anything, with that idea, and that feeling of, like, potential, something great could happen. It would be a wonderful way to live, you know, instead of the stressed way that we sort of fall into.

And listening to the two of you, I'm reminded of Mikhail Csikszentmi Hayee's book, Big Book a couple of decades ago, Finding Flow.

I'm not sure if you know the book, but he was a happiness researcher out of the US and what his research demonstrated was when you're on the very edge of building up some expertise so you feel kind of confident, but you take the risk at the same time because you don't know where it's going and it's exciting. And if you can be at that right point between the two things, you don't fall into fight or flight, but you don't get bored. Right.

You're on the edge of, ah, I think I can do this. I don't know what's next.

And that's it. On the edge of the. I don't know what's next, but it's exciting. Right? You get into a flow. Yeah. And that's it.

And it's like when we're talking about scene work, that's the idea. It's like you jump in and you don't know what the other actor is going to do.

And you hope that it's something that is reactive to what you're thinking.

And then suddenly there's that chemistry stuff happens that you didn't expect, you know, and that's when a script that you've read a million times feels fresh. It feels like it's happening in real time and everything's new.

Even though you know how the story unfolds or what's going to happen, who's going to say what, but how that happens, that's the exciting part. Right. And so, yeah, being in that flow is amazing.

Oh, if we could bring that into our everyday life. Right.

Flexibility, like you said, it's not expectation. You're driving down the road, you see something, you go for it. That wasn't exactly where you were supposed to go.

It's that adventure, that spirited part of our life that we can bring in at any time if we're open.

Yeah. I mean, expectation, I think, will definitely burden you, whereas potential will inspire you, you know, And I think.

And it's what I'd like to be inspired, you know, at any given moment. Just be inspired. That's what all these acting classes are for.

That's what we're, you know, we're just looking for ways to trigger that flame, you know, genuinely and genuinely inspire us in some way. You know, I think if you ever had that dream of trying that thing, just do it. Just try it. We can't control the world.

We can't sit back and go, well, I don't like these things. I mean, we can definitely voice our concerns. We can get out there and protest when we need to.

We can get out there and call your local MP or whatever and be active in that way. But at the end of the day, there are decision makers who are going to make decisions for whatever purpose, whatever reason.

Oftentimes you don't have that control to do anything. But we have control within our own lives, in our own worlds to engage in these things that make us better.

Making the world a better place is a very overwhelming task as a whole. But helping one person get better is a much more attainable task, I think.

And if everybody goes out there and help somebody else improve themselves a little bit more, well, you know, it spreads. Right.

And if we take accountability for what we think and what we say and how we interact with people, that it creates a ripple effect, too. And we model behavior. Other people then start to, you know, be kinder. Because we're kinder.

Yeah.

And that. That spreads. It's a movement that we want to spread one person at a time.

And I think what you guys are doing here and that you talk about your own experiences, your guests talk about their experiences, their leaps of faith into the unknown. I think that inspires people. I hope that it inspires people. I'm sure you guys hope that as well.

It's a leap of faith for us. I mean, we haven't done a podcast before, so we just leapt in, and here we are.

But, you know, when I work with clients, my goal really, at the end of the day, is to inspire them, right? To kind of just help them take that little leap of faith and go, I think I can do it.

Or at least I can try it, you know, and inspire them to do something, because that makes all the difference. And it might be fun, and it might be fun along the way, and you might discover something about yourself.

You make something. Mistakes. But that's okay to make a mistake. That's how we learn. That's how we grow.

Like we've said earlier, you're not gonna die from your mistake on stage or on camera or on a microphone.

Like Edwin said, though, it can seem so overwhelming, but, you know, this almost feels obtainable, attainable. It feels like if it's just a little step I do in my little life and I'm contributing to the greater good, I think I can do that. Mm.

It's something we all can participate in.

Absolutely.

Yet it feels so overwhelming. But it doesn't need to be right.

No, it doesn't. I think all of this also ties into storytelling, you know, and the fact that through stories we teach, we learn, we inspire, we create. Right.

So I think that that shared knowledge, that shared experience can, like you were saying, just create this ripple effect that will hopefully inspire other people and help them move forward and one person at a time, you know, hopefully the world gets better that way.

Well, we're all storytellers at heart. You know, each and every one of us has something through our experience to say.

I mean, it's intrinsic to our nature. Think about the oldest stories are cave paintings.

They weren't left there and put up and then erased and crossed out to tally the day or to communicate something. They were left there. So our ancestors painted these things with a purpose, to say something on that wall. How the hunt went. Who was there?

Whatever it is, we've been doing it since we could, right? And they were left untouched because they. They meant something or they mattered in some way. Storytelling matters in that way. It can inspire.

It can change people. It can. It can move nations. It can destroy things.

You know, as we can see in, like, you know, our current world, where misinformation and stories about this and that crop up all the time, storytelling and our ability to communicate in that way has so much power.

And in the end, life is a story.

Yeah.

It's that simple, isn't it? Interesting how Edwin reframed fear, huh? Instead of fight or flight, he reminded us that the real magic happens when you.

You breathe, Step into the moment and let yourself be pulled into the story.

You're living exactly his philosophy of flow. The idea that life feels most alive when you don't know exactly what's going to happen next. It's something we can all take with us.

Yeah.

Whether it's on stage, on set, or in our everyday lives, that openness to possibility is what creates connection and charisma.

Because once you stop chasing perfection and start focusing on the other person, on the story, and on being present, you discover your voice.

And that's where influence and impact begin. We're so grateful Edwin shared his perspective with us. And we hope it inspires you to find your own flow, to take your.

Own leap of faith and step more fully into presence and authenticity. Join our movement @Ignite My Voice.com.Ignite My Voice.com. ignite My Voice. Becoming unstoppable. Your voice is your superpower. Use it.