Peter Berkrot

What was the first audiobook you performed?

When the Whistle Blows by Fran Cannon Slayton

What title or series are you best known for?

The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself by Michael A. Singer

If a listener wanted to get to know your work, which of your audiobooks would you point them to?

The Yid by Paul Goldberg
Unholy Night by Seth Grahame-Smith
Toby Alone by Timothée de Fombelle
The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters
The Mailman by Andrew Welsh-Huggins

Where else have we heard your voice?

I.M. MEEN, I.M. Meen (Video Game)
FRONTLINE, WGBH, Multiple episodes and vocals (News Program)
TWILIGHT MERIDIAN, The Detective (Podcast)
MAGIC TALES: THE LITTLE SAMURAI, Multiple Roles (Video Game)
ELFQuest: JOURNEY TO SORROW’S END, Adya, Doorkeeper, Tabak (Podcast)

What do you always have in the booth?

Lemon Water in a Yeti, Box o’ Tissues, Swiftly Cooling Coffee

How did you come to performing audiobooks?

Came out of the womb wailing in iambic pentameter and kept moving until it resembled dancing and got me the attention I craved. Trained at AADA in New York starting at 13, jump cut to Feature Role in CADDYSHACK at 20, incorporated teaching and directing at 30 and narrated my first book at 50, roughly 700 titles and several thousand grey hairs ago. Still dancing for attention and bending and getting up slowly in iambic pentameter.

Anything else you’d like a listener to know?

My mother was a reader. My father was a reader. By the time I was four, I was too. I remember sitting on my Kindergarten teacher’s lap, about to read a book to the whole class. Mrs. Schoenberger held the book, A VISIT TO THE ZOO, and me. I began to read, then froze. I saw every word clear as day, took a breath, looked up at my peers, about 40 of them and pretended I couldn’t read a word. Six decades later I can still see the first page, the bright Yellow and Red sign pointing “To The Zoo”. In that heartbeat, I was sure they would hate and mock me for showing off. So my first lie, my first acting job successfully led the teacher to put me back on the floor and take over.

For a long time afterward, I was ashamed and disappointed but I learned nothing and went on to be afraid of everything for another eight years. Then I discovered acting. And I ever since then I have always had something I wasn’t afraid of. That journey has kept me young and curious and passionate and abundant for another 60 years.

The moral: Draw your own conclusions. Life is scary. Find something that isn’t.

Don’t hide your gifts. It might be the only thing that separates us from the machines.

Or a more cynical take is no one is really thinking about you all that much so don’t be your own loudest judge. Or maybe it’s simply, to quote the title of a new favorite movie, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die.

For me, I’m a big fan of irony. So I like to think that I’m making up for staring at that page for the longest 20 seconds of my life and then looking out at all those crewcuts and pigtails and not saying “A VISIT TO THE ZOO”.