JC Wright is a community theatre veteran in Chatham-Kent, acting and directing with Theatre Kent and Studio Black.
Now, she’s making her debut as a voice actor in a virtual reality video game, Flow Weaver, on the Oculus system.
Although she’s done some voice acting in the past, Wright says recording for a video game was a new and challenging experience with each line having to be performed in a variety of ways to match how the game is playing out.
“I thought because of my background it would be really easy to just do the same line over and over again, it wasn’t. Sometimes it was a question of an inflection on one word, or hitting a certain beat to what you were saying,” Wright says. “You aren’t using your body in any way to convey an emotion, here it was all voice.”
The concept is essentially a virtual escape room with the lead character imprisoned in a room.
“I play the character called Flow Weaver. Basically my character has been captured, doesn’t know by who, doesn’t know how, isn’t really aware of even being the Flow Weaver, just knows that they’ve been imprisoned in a room and can’t move.”
The game comes with both an English and French version. Ciarán Strange from Borderlands 3 is cast in the English role while Wright plays the French character. Wright says one of the biggest thrills was being able to perform in her native tongue.
“I never get to play in French,” Wright says. “It was very fun to be able to play a character in the language in which I am most conformable. The other thing that was kind of cool is they decided it wasn’t going to be French from France or a Québécois accent, they really wanted Franco-Ontarians. I’ve never been able to use my own accent.”
Flow Weaver is being released on Thursday, March 11.