Meet Allanah Briggs

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Allanah Briggs a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Allanah, thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?

I think that as someone who grew up as a performer, and an overall busy person, my work ethic comes from having almost no other choice. I started dancing when I was three, and started singing and acting classes when I was five. Having to balance my school work on top of all of these extra-curriculars was certainly a challenge, however I was doing what I loved, and therefore had to find a way to make it all work.

Even when I was young, I knew that I wanted to make performing a part of my life forever, and knew that this was the career path that I wanted to take. I feel like even when I was first starting I knew how much work it was going to take to pursue my dreams, and so I really instilled a work ethic within myself even when I was young. I also deeply cared about school and wanted to do well in my classes, so I had to build up the skills in order to balance my academic and life goals and do my best to succeed in all aspects of my life.

However, I never could have done it alone. I had so many amazing people in my corner. My family and friends have always been my biggest cheerleaders, so even on days where the work felt hard, or too much, I had people by my side to support me. I also had some of the greatest teachers to guide me on this path. I think particularly growing up in a dance studio, where I was spending roughly 8-10 hours a week taking classes, really trained me not only how to work hard and grow my skills, but also how to work with the people around me to reach a shared end result. I can confidently say that without the students and teachers at my studio, Coastal Dance Company, my second family, I would not be the person or performer that I am today. Because of dance, I was able to fall in love with performing, build up skills as a performer, and most importantly work with the people around me to help me to keep reaching for my dreams. While I started pursuing acting after I started dance, my love for performance absolutely started as a dancer, which gave me the skills to build the work ethic that I have today.

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

As an actor, there is nothing I love more than entertaining people. I remember during one of my first acting showcases, I was so terrified that people were going to “laugh at me” because the scene that I was doing was comedy, and people usually laughed during rehearsal. However, I remember my acting teacher telling me that the audience laughing was a good thing, and that they would be laughing WITH me, not at me, and that getting a reaction out of the audience and making people enjoy what you are doing is the entire point of being an actor. When I got those laughs from the crowd, something that I had dreaded just minutes before going on stage, that was the moment that I knew I wanted to be an actor. I knew that I was able to entertain people, and I fell in love with the feeling.

From then on, I fell in love with the comedy genre, I began watching more comedy movies and TV shows, and knowing that that’s what I wanted to do with my life. In my personal life, I strive to be the funniest person in the room. I pull this into my work, and even when the work I am doing is dark, heavy, or dramatic, I know that the most important thing for me to do is to make people feel when they watch me perform.

Something that I know now that I didn’t know during that first performance, is that making people feel is something that is more than just for fun, for both actor and audience. It’s a way to bring the people that watch what you do together, because despite the fact that there are so many individual walks of life that your audience members may be experiencing, in the moments where you can entertain them, they are able to feel something when they watch a performance. My goal as an actor is to make people feel something, whether it’s something that comes from a deep emotional place, or just a few moments of joy. And so, I try to take that with me into any performance that I do.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

I think that looking back on the life that I have lived, and the place that I am in now, I definitely have some things that I can take away from my individual experiences.

The first, is to stop caring so much about what other people think of you. I think that it’s hard, especially in the generation of social media, to avoid worrying about how the world will see you. But as I have gotten older, I had to stop trying so hard to fit in the box of what is “normal” or “acceptable”. I know that not everyone is going to like me, or everything that I do, but I pride myself on being the best version of myself, instead of the best version of what everyone else expects of me. In doing this, I have been able to find the truest version of myself, and therefore my performances are more authentic because I am able to pull from who I truly am, instead of the character that was expected of me.

I think that the second takeaway is the empathy that I have gained from my life. Acting is all about empathy because you have to empathize with the characters that you are playing, or you will never be able to authentically play them. Something that I pride myself on is how deeply I care about the people in my life. I owe them everything for making me the person that I am today. Over the years, I have seen so many people that I care so deeply about go through a lot of challenges. The most important thing to me was to make sure that whatever they were going through, I could be there to support them. That empathy built over the years, and it made me a better person, which lead into me being able to empathize even deeper with the characters that I play, which makes me a better actor.

The third and final takeaway that made me the person and actor that I am today, is to never give up. In this industry, the easiest thing to do is quit when things get hard, because there are definitely bad days in this business. I think that building up this skill is what has best set me up for success in this industry. I think this comes mostly from my drive to do my best in everything that I do. I refuse to stop until I am sure I have given it my all, and if it doesn’t work out I know that I did my best, and something else will come that is right for me. I have been so passionate about the field that I am in for my whole life, and to give up would not only be a disservice to myself, but also to all of the work that I have put in to get where I am today.

I think that for the people that struggle with these areas, the best advice that I would give to them is to learn more about themselves. Knowing myself, and the areas that I needed to work on within myself, was how I was able to build up these skills. Take the time, you don’t have to be on a deadline as you grow and come into yourself. Take the time to always take care of yourself, because you can’t grow if you don’t know who you are.

Any advice for folks feeling overwhelmed?

As someone who struggles with anxiety, I often have days or weeks where everything seems overwhelming. Something that I do to help when life starts to feel this way is to break things down. I decide what I can take control over in the moment, and do that, and if there is nothing I can do about something, then I try to let it go. Of course there are moments where that is simply not possible, and so I do things that I enjoy to take me out of those moments of overwhelming anxiety.

A piece of advice that I both hold onto for myself, and try to give to others when they are overwhelmed, is that worrying about something is only putting yourself through it twice. We cannot predict the future, and so doing so is only going to add to how overwhelmed you feel, if something bad does happen, and you spent weeks or months worrying about it, you have had to go through it twice now. The worst thing that can happen with this mindset, is it happens, at least you didn’t waste time terrified that it was going to happen, and more often than not the thing that you’re most worried about isn’t going to happen at all.

Of course these strategies don’t always work, but we are only human, we are going to have bad days, and days where things seem impossible to get through, but step back, and take care of yourself, and try your best to accept what you can and can’t control.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.allanahbriggsactor.com/
• Instagram: allanahbriggs

Image Credits

Ellice Ford Photography (for headshots and professional photos only)