Rebecca Forstadt became "Reba West" when she was cast as the English-language
Lyn Minmay in Robotech. Since then, she's kept active as a dialogue replacement
actor specializing in childrens voices. West has remained in anime dubbing,
serving as the voice actor for Mihoshi in the second half of the dubbed
Tenchi-Muyo episodes and Tima in the Metropolis movie. Mari Iijima, the
original voice of Minmay, tells how she happened to be in the right place
at the right time when the role was cast and impressed producers with her
musical ability. West has a similar story; she was acting around Los Angeles
when she learned of the Robotech auditions. "I had no idea how big it was
going to be," recalled West. "The director asked me if I could sing, and
I said `Sort of.' I just got up in front of the microphone and sang `It's
my party.' I couldn't remember any of the words, but I got the part."
Where Iijima was a singer who got an acting role, West
was an actor who was turned into a singer. The name "Reba West" was born
because Robotech was a non-union project and Forstadt was a union member.
"We didn't have a contract," she said, adding that she once was glad she'd
used a different name for the dub. "At that point Robotech had a lot of
really rabid fans and people either loved it or they hated it." If Minmay
was the kind of character that some fans loved to dislike, West's singing
fell in the same category - and she admitted as much at Sugoi Con. "Singing
was never my main thing," she said. "I loved it but I never was a trained
singer. I was amazed at how people reacted. In Robotech I thought it was
going to be like a rock song where they made several tracks of your voice
to make it sound better, but it was like singing show tunes - it was difficult."
West and the rest of the non-union Robotech voice cast didn't
get rich from their work. "We didn't get paid much money. Anime wasn't
tremendously popular in television at that point. We never knew where it
went and we didn't pay too much attention to it." While West's script adaptation
writing still pays more than acting, she stays active as a performer. West
has had some many roles that she can't remember them all. She recalled
acting in a dub of the Rurouni Kenshin series, but she said that dub was
dropped and replaced with another English-language cast. Once West acted
in an early, unreleased dub of the original Gundam series. But West's most
unique experience came when she appeared in a production of stage plays
by Romanian playwright Eugene Ionesco, master of the theater of the absurd.
Ionesco liked the performances so much that he wrote a new play for the
troupe to produce, she said.
