We recently connected with Ken Dickason and have shared our conversation below.

Ken, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. One of the toughest things about progressing in your creative career is that there are almost always unexpected problems that come up – problems that you often can’t read about in advance, can’t prepare for, etc. Have you had such and experience and if so, can you tell us the story of one of those unexpected problems you’ve encountered?

I had a stroke when I was 19. Feels weird to say; usually, people have these in their 70’s, and they rarely survive.

But me? I wasn’t old enough to buy beer.

I was doing a community theater play in college. My university only cast theater majors, and I thought that was a crock, since I wanted a “real” job (Haha! The man with the Political Science/Communications double major turns his nose up at theater kids!). In the role, I was supposed to be electrocuted and pass out. Turns out, I accidentally dipped my toe into method acting, and totally blacked out, and had a literal out of body experience. I saw myself on the stage from the audience’s perspective. It was…disconcerting, to say the least.

My fellow actor on stage saw that something was wrong, but stayed admirably in character by walking up to me and slapping me. This jolted me back into my body, and I carried on the play as normal. But I walked with a cane for about 6 months, and for about 15 years, I had a weird paralyzing illness that would come and go, and could NEVER be properly diagnosed.

I moved to Hollywood, because I figured that if I was going to die young (fun fact: everyone around me figured this thing would kill me before I turned 25. As of now, I’m 37), I decided I was going to pursue my dream as an actor.

When I turned 34, this whole illness…stopped. Forever. Never came back. I spent the 2020 quarantine weaning myself off the medication I had been taking to control everything, because the medication made me a much worse actor. Sapped my energy and my strength something fierce. July of 2020, I was finally off all medication, and let me tell you: Withdrawal was a B*TCH. I had spent over a decade relying on anti-convulsants to keep me alive, and my body had adapted. It wasn’t ready to be totally deprived of its favorite drug, but I pushed through. Had to.

For about 2 years, I was normal. Felt weird. Didn’t feel like I was myself.

I guess it came as a bit of a relief when I had another stroke during the 4th of July in 2022.

Ken, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am a voiceover actor. When I was a kid, I would read VORACIOUSLY, and I would often mimic voices I heard in real life or on the television. As I was an only child, I would often use these voices as a way to keep things interesting when I played with my plastic army men or dinosaur figurines.

As time progressed, I realized that most people couldn’t play with voices like I could. I also learned that SOME accents were a bit more offensive to people than others. (thank God TikTok and YouTube didn’t exist before I had the chance to learn, because what at the time was a child innocently playing around would have been seen as an unforgiveable offense to society!)

During the Pandemic, I branched out from in-person auditions to more voiceover work. I found that editing sound was something I was quite good at. Some friends and I started a radio show on YouTube called “Pinkerton’s Ghosts,” a supernatural detective series that combines three faith-based detectives, fighting (or, more often, barely surviving) a host of ghouls, goblins, vampires, and other creatures from mythology and legend. I was the sound editor for the show, and while our first 5-10 episodes were,…admittedly a little rough, as my fellow contributors were updating their own microphone system, EVENTUALLY I got everyone on the same page in terms of quality. Plus, my own experience grew, so that I was able to be far more efficient with my time.

My character, Jim Donavan, is heavily inspired by the Dresden Files, and is the wizard of the group. “Pinkerton’s Ghosts” blends metaphysics and quantum mechanics into its magic so that it ALMOST seems possible, and then wedges in the greater morality of meddling in affairs that mere mortals were never meant to. Will Jim eventually become corrupt and the other detectives have to kill him before he takes over the world? Only time will tell…

Can you share your view on NFTs? (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)

So, it’s kind of funny, my familiarity with NFTs. One of my recurring jobs during the Pandemic was to record a radio drama for an NFT called “Kingdom of Dwarves.” Kingdom of Dwarves combined some animators from Disney/Pixar who were looking to branch out during a time when the industry was slow, and maybe some money for their families on the side. As a part of this, and as an incentive for investors, they hired me to make some commercials, but also to do an audiobook/audio drama read of this rather long story that they had been writing.

It was a fun little project that allowed me to use a wide range of voices, and to REALLY get dramatic with it. I got to take some of what I learned from Pinkerton’s Ghosts and apply it to Kingdom of Dwarves, and back and forth and so on.

They offered to pay me in bitcoin, but I have to be honest: I’ve NEVER understood cryptocurrency. I’ve had a lot of people try to explain it to me, but it seems like magic, but with extra steps. After the first payment in Solara, I took the rest in cash.

Funny enough, I just looked at my online wallet (for the first time in years), and apparently it has gained 80% in value. Soooooooo….welp, guess I should have kept requesting my pay to come in that weird product I didn’t understand! [deep belly laugh]

Have you ever had to pivot?

After the Pandemic, in 2021, my best friend and I were sitting around, trying to think of a good way to inject life back into our acting careers. The industry was just about ready to open up, and he and I were pretty strong and relatively creative.

I had recently asked a girl out by taking the words to “Do You Want to Build a Snowman?” and making it an invitation to go on a hike . From that odd burst of creativity, I decided “Hey! Let’s make a Viking parody of the Little Mermaid’s, ‘Part of Your World!'”

My friend, always down for a good time, said, “Yes! Let’s spend all our money and call in a bunch of favors to make this a reality!”

And so began my first foray into the wild world of producing. This was only a 5-minute video, but because it was an action piece, it required us to get creative in our budget and in our abilities as actors – and MY ability as a singer! To this day, I still cringe at a few bad notes.

We filmed in 100* weather over Labor Day weekend, I was in leather, chainmail, and fur. By the end of the shoot day, I had sweat every last ounce of electrolytes out of my body and was cramping up. I had mild heat stroke, BUT no one died. In 6 months, we turned a ridiculous idea into….a pretty good short video that I’ll link later in this piece. Even now, I’m working to turn it into a full length musical with original songs, so that Disney can’t get mad at me.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @celtcancook
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/ken-dickason-a94878252
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@superversivesf9466, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2iCFsghUKs (This is the King of the World video)

Image Credits
Elaine Reid