Meet Talbot Hall

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Talbot Hall. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Talbot below.

Talbot, sincerely appreciate your selflessness in agreeing to discuss your mental health journey and how you overcame and persisted despite the challenges. Please share with our readers how you overcame. For readers, please note this is not medical advice, we are not doctors, you should always consult professionals for advice and that this is merely one person sharing their story and experience.

As someone who suffers from depression, OCD, and chronic pain, I have certainly faced atypical challenges for an artist my age. I think the first thing that I try to consider is the fact that I am a human being. Not a machine. Human beings are fallible. And fragile. We make mistakes. Our bodies break, our brains break, and a great deal of things will happen to us in life which are outside of our control. Those are the simple facts of being human.

Machines, in theory, work nonstop. They create perfection in accordance with a mold. They do it quickly, without thought, feeling, emotion, or connections. We are not machines. And thank that God that we aren’t.

Human imperfection is a central quality of art. And as an artist, that imperfection can take many forms. Depressive periods. Trauma. Sickness. Anxiety. But it is the job of the artist to first heal from an experience, and then, if they so choose, to share what they have distilled from it with their creations.

I want to clarify: I do not believe that you should be in a perpetual state of suffering in order to make art. I firmly believe in prioritizing myself as a human being first and making sure that the non-artist parts of my life are of quality. However, I personally believe that whether adverse experiences and conditions have a cosmic message within them or whether we are simply finding meaning in them in order to reconcile them, observing them and making commentary on how they’ve changed us is of extreme emotional and social importance. Whether there is something all-knowing dictating what we experience and what we learn from it or it is simply ourselves realizing that a painful experience has endowed us with new perspective, empathy, patience, or another gift, it is of value. We must acknowledge the suffering, share in it, heal from it as much as a human can, and then perhaps we can create from it.

I have learned to learn myself, and to then honor what I have learned. I don’t work quickly. I don’t learn quickly. But I work and learn well. My sleep schedule is radically different from the other people in my life, sometimes due to pain. I work and take meetings sitting up in bed. And I have learned to accept that as a present fact, and to stop shaming myself for the things which are outside of my control. I acknowledge and honor my humanity. If I cannot write today because of pain or anxiety, than I will find another way to contribute to the world that day that is compatible with where I am emotionally and physically. I have learned to maintain respect for my pace. I have begun to learn my preferences and boundaries, which are often informed by adverse mental or physical health barriers, and to respectfully stand behind them.

In honoring yourself as a human being, with all of your flaws, with all of the suffering that comes from being human, you honor yourself as an artist and encourage others to do the same. In prioritizing yourself and maintaining the boundaries that allow you to stay mentally and physically healthy, you allow yourself to progress to a place where you can create comfortably.

I try not to think of painful things in the terms of “how can I use this in my art” when I’m having an adverse experience, because I want to do what’s best for me as a whole person, not simply an artist. That said, I will say without exception that my best work has all been derived in some way from an adverse experiences.
Fun is fun, but in hindsight, it’s not very interesting.

So I am very inspired by the suffering that I’ve experienced, and that comes out on paper. But even more importantly, I first allow myself the time to heal and be whole as a complete person. I then work in the ways that work for me. We are all made differently. We have different abilities, preferences, and boundaries. And that is a wonderful thing. I try very hard to honor that in others and in myself, and to give grace when people will not do things in the same way that I do them. Do not try to fit into a mold or force others into one. Respect yourself mentally and physically, and allow collaborators into your life who do the same. It’s far healthier and more exciting create original molds, for all of their imperfections, struggles, strife, and tribulation.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

I think what I’m working on most in my life right now is myself, as cliché as that sounds. Because everything that I do creatively and in business has to come from me, and ideally a representation of the best version of me. Every venture to me is personal. Every idea is about connection. Connection, to me, means knowing myself, knowing someone else, and forming an intentional bond with them for the simple reason that I believe that bond to be the fabric of human progress and coexistence.

That said, I’m excited to announce that I am a Nicholl Quarterfinalist of 2024, in addition to being a finalist for the Sundance Lab for 2024. So I’m working on the final drafts of a feature-length script, as well as developing a sophomore feature that’s more dark comedy/dramedy leaning. I’m shooting 35mm still film series, I’m doing a ton of totally miscellaneous arts and crafts (I run an Etsy Shop – The Pop Shop by Talbot!), and I’m consuming a ton of art. I’m also about to move to Chicago, where I plan to get some of the rust off of my presence in theatre. It’s very important to me to keep live art alive.

All of my ventures, whether it’s screenwriting, playwriting, directing for film or stage, photography, or something as niche as embroidery art, are different avenues into my creativity. I usually find that if I’m blocked in one outlet another one can be explored freely. But I’m at the heart of everything that I do. It all has my spirit, touches of it, within it. Streaks of my experiences, flaws, humor, perspective. That carries over across all mediums.

I want to be known as an artist who understands the transcendent capability of art when it is rooted in a human being’s sincere desire to express their truest self and to form human connection. I believe that if that is the source of your art, it will naturally bleed over into multiple mediums. Writing and directing are my primary career, but I don’t think they could contain everything I want to express. Embroidering on a hospital gown, for instance, comes from the same place as my dramatic writing, but it takes the form it does because it’s something that I feel I could not express in writing, at least not in its most effective form.

I have had an outrageously curvy and rocky path. Nothing has been linnear. I suppose I’d really want a reader to take that away from everything that I’ve said. I graduated high school at 16. I graduated college at age 25. I was then too sick to work for about five years. Nothing has come easily, but I don’t believe that it’s meant to. The things that come easily to me are typically the things that I later have the least to say about. It’s the painful, challenging, difficult things that have shaped me as a person, chiseled me down to my most authentic self, and given me the most perspective, voice, and empathy creatively. No matter what you’re going through, I believe that suffering has great value in a human life and in the life of an artist. I mean that well within reason. You do not have to be in constant suffering to be an artist, and you must allow yourself time to heal, grow, and change, without pressuring yourself to produce.

But that doesn’t mean you then move on and try hard to forget the bad times. Respect yourself enough as a human being to heal, and then, if or when you’re moved to, allow your experiences to blossom into art. But that won’t happen if you don’t establish some kind of amicable relationship with adverse experiences. Avoiding suffering is an exercise in futility. It is an inevitability of life, and it is a critical part of self-actualization.

Take care of yourself and let others into your life who take care of you and want what’s best for you. And give them the same care. Do not resist difficult experiences. As my mother says, “what you resist persists.” As much as they don’t feel like it they are purposeful. But more importantly they are part of a shared human experience. I’ve connected with way more people because of my chronic pain than I have from taking day trips to the beach. You should enjoy your life and cherish the good times, but don’t push the hard times away. Take a step back and look at them from a new angle. You’ll learn something about yourself and your art, and you’ll create validating, representative, important work that people both want and need.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Emotional resilience, communication, and humility.

Emotional resilience is simply your bounceback response to adversity. That’s something that’s built over time. You experience, for instance, rejection, hardship, loneliness, loss, illness, or something that temporarily puts you out of commission. An emotionally resilient person is one who A. wants to bounce back, and cares more about their passion and conviction than about the pain of the moment, and B. cultivates the qualities and coping mechanisms that help them to bounce back. Everyone deserves time to grieve losses, sickness, mistakes, and whatever else life throws at them. But when, how, and why you bounce back from those experiences, I’ve found, will be one of the most important determining factors of your success.

Communication is the cornerstone of life and artistry. Communicating as an artist is one thing, and I’ll return to it. But communicating as a person, in this context, means respectfully communicating your boundaries, abilities or disabilities, and expectations. It can mean disclosing to a producer up front, when the time is right, that you are experiencing a difficult time in your life, and that that may eventually require some accommodations to be made. You are and must be your own best advocate as a human being, especially if you’ve been dealt a blow in life that’s knocked you off course.

That said, communication in art is critical. The most obvious example to me is the skill set required to direct film. The art of directing is in crafting a very specific and intentional vision, and then having the communcatatory ability to speak the language of many different departments filled with many people who are nothing like you. In order to get good at this, you have to try and you have to fail. It’s as simple as that. Nothing will teach you how to hone your communication skills better than experiencing the consequences of a communication breakdown. Believe me, I’ve been there. There’s a reason I compulsively specify whether I’m speaking in feet or inches when I’m talking to a production designer. Because at one point I didn’t properly know how to communicate with artists who worked in different disciplines than me, and I paid the price. Haha.

And lastly, humility. Listen ten times more than you speak. Understand that you have something to learn about and from every single person around you. You may feel compelled to pass judgement on a crewmember for whatever reason, but there is not one person on your set who isn’t better at something than you are. Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you and ask questions. Devote time that you would have spent trying to prove yourself to simply absorbing the wisdom and experience of those further along in their careers than you are. Be transparent if you don’t know how to wrap a cable. Be honest if you don’t know the software but have the motivation to learn it. Great artists are lifelong learners. And the more you learn, the more you realize just how much you don’t know. Ask, ask, ask. Think you’re doing something the wrong way? Shelve your ego and go ask someone to teach you a better way. Think your draft is finished? Ask the person who you’re most afraid of in your industry circle to give it a read. There might be a reason they’re the person you’re most afraid of. No one comes out of the womb a professional, skilled artist. It takes a lot of trial, a lot of error, a lot of rejection, and a lot of mentorship. Don’t focus on proving that you’re good. Focus on learning how to be better.

Before we go, maybe you can tell us a bit about your parents and what you feel was the most impactful thing they did for you?

Not a day in my life has passed when I didn’t feel loved and supported as a writer and an artist by my parents, and that is a gift that many people do not have. From the time I was a young actor all I heard were words of encouragement. They were formative. And believe me, if anyone had reason to want me to be in a field with stronger guarantee of consistent success, it’s my family. We aren’t an industry family and don’t come from means. We’ve lived paycheck to paycheck for as long as I can remember.

But as much as my parents could have insisted that I do something more practical, they saw me. They saw my creativity. My passion. My discipline. My excitement. They saw me as a human being with gifts and drive and fire, and they nurtured my spirit. Never once did I feel as though I was unsupported. They respected that if their child said that she loved something and wanted to become good at it, even to dedicate her entire life to it, then that was what she was meant to do. And they would support it with genuine care, enormous sacrifice, and unconditional love.

I want to say this for those of you who read that statement and feel envy: know that you will find people in life who make you feel the way your parents tragically did not. You will find your chosen family, and they will nourish and cheer you on creatively. Know that I realize how powerful the support of my parents was, particularly when they had every reason to root for me to be a CPA. I don’t take it for granted. Not for a moment. Life gives us gifts and hindrances. My parents can’t fund a feature film that I want to make, but they could drive me almost two hours round trip, every night, my entire childhood, to rehearsal. Because they knew that I loved it, and they love me. And they would find a way to make it happen. I’m now at an age when I can fully realize the impact my parents’ support had on me. The depth of their sacrifice to stretch paychecks for acting classes. How lucky am I to have grown up in a home in which I was told I could pursue my dreams, and that I’d be successful. That I was worthy. Parents: that is one of the greatest gifts you can give a child. Please take my word for it.

There’s something quite special about not having money. You have nothing to lose. My parents trusted that if I said I wanted to be an artist I would make myself an artist. If I wanted to write, I would be a writer. They could have doubted me, encouraged me to think more safely in terms of practicality, or stopped me from driving across the country when I was 18 for a job interview in Los Angeles. But they knew and trusted their baby girl. They saw and respected me enough to let me follow my heart. We had nothing to lose, but they recognized that I had something to gain. That even if I didn’t make a multimillion dollar blockbuster, I could always saw that my parents believed that I could have. I hope they know just how much that means to me and will mean to me for the rest of my career and my life. Thank you, mama. Thank you, dad.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://talbotnhall.com
• Instagram: @talbothall
• Facebook: Talbot Hall
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/talbot-hall-a8a26992