Barrett Wilbert Weed

“My father passed away when I was pretty young. I was 7 years old, and I think when that happens, there are a variety of ways that a young person can react to that loss. I think, for me, it kind of put me in a perpetual state of feeling like something is wrong with me and like I didn't belong, or everybody else had things that I didn't have.”

“I think, when you're an actor, it kind of enables you to fully inhabit all of the youngest parts of yourself.”

“I would love to do stuff on camera. That's what I want to do. It took me a really long time to feel confident as an actor. I think, also, because there's a weird stigma about musical theater where we treat the men who do musical theater differently than we treat the women in musical theater.”

“High school is something that we have to deal with. It's not a glorified fluffy, fun, prince-and-princess kind of time.”

“The point of songs in theater is that you're supposed to end up in a different place than where you started.”

“You have to learn how to dress yourself and how to walk into a room and talk to people. Once you're in rehearsal, you have to know how to rehearse and how to communicate with your creatives, even if you don't communicate the same way.”

“When you become a professional, there is all this other stuff you have to do. That part is the job, capital J-O-B. They're very different things, but they're all part of the same career. Once you get onstage and you get to perform, that's your reward for doing your job.”

“It's important to be really verbal about what you believe, to try to claim America as your own, as we're trying to figure out the identity of this country and what we're going to be.”

“As an adult, you want to connect with people, and you want to feel accepted.”

“When 'Mean Girls' came out, I was 15. So I saw that movie and was like, 'That is so funny.' But it still has that fluffy, happy ending, and that doesn't happen in high school.”

“Tina Fey is a genius - I've seen it with my own eyes now. She's a very observant person, and I've never seen somebody write such a high volume or as quickly as she does.”

“I teach voice, and I teach pretty much just, like, whatever people need. So if they want me to work on a monologue with them, or if they want me to do some work with them, I do that. And then I do master classes, like at high schools - which is my most favorite thing to do.”

“The goal, when you're playing a character that's super beloved from a movie, is to honor what the actor before you has done and then really just expand, which is what you get to do in a musical because you have songs, choreography, and everything is happening in real time.”

“Whenever I'm teaching teenagers, I always try to treat them, like, a little bit more gently but the same that I treat adults.”

“When I was in high school, I was so in love - as I should have been - with the performance aspect of theater and just the literal act of performing.”

“I started performing with the Boston Children's Opera when I was 5, and I stayed working with that group until I was about 12 or 13, so that was a huge part of my life. It was, weirdly, an extremely professional environment geared towards kids.”

“I got serious about performing, and I got serious about acting. It's very funny; singing has always been a very separate thing for me - until I went to college. I just studied musical theater because I was like, 'That means I can study voice and acting in the same major, and I won't have to double major.' Now I do musicals for a living.”

“I wind up playing these characters a lot: They have self-esteem issues, or they're going through a lot as a young adult.”

“One of the things I love about stage makeup is I get to play up my eyes even more than usual.”

“When I heard that they were making 'Mean Girls' into a musical, I immediately said, 'That's my part. I want to play Janis so badly.' And I wanted to hang out with Tina Fey! What's cooler than that?”