Meet Annabel

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Annabel. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Annabel, so excited to have you with us today. So much we can chat about, but one of the questions we are most interested in is how you have managed to keep your creativity alive.

Keeping creativity alive is tough. At times I’ve tried to do things like make what can only be described as a self directed, quasi writer’s retreat – where I isolate myself in my room and create a regimented schedule with page deadlines. While that does force me to be quote unquote “productive”, it also makes everything I’m able to pump out feel stale and robotic. It’s easy to get words on a page, it’s hard to make them words worth sharing. True productivity for me comes when creativity and work ethic are able to align. In order to reignite my creativity, what I find works best for me is consuming as much art and media as I can. I go to town on my AMC A list membership and watch every movie I can. Living in New York is incredible because I have access to as much theatre as I can afford. Or another totally free alternative is people watching and observing. Human kind is so much stranger than fiction, and paying close attention to the creative nuggets that people in your day to day life offer you are sometimes the most fruitful things for me both as a writer and an actor.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

I am an actor and writer originally from Sydney, Australia and currently based in New York. I recently graduated with a BFA (Honors) from the New School, and upon graduation have been making my mark on the NYC theatre scene. While I definitely act and write separately from one another, my favorite thing to do that excites me the most is combining my two passions and creating vehicles for myself to be apart of. My most recent project – ‘Archive of My Own’ – is allowing me to do just that. It is a zany coming-of-age comedy play about a young woman grappling with the dissonance between the highly choreographed love scenes from her fanfiction past and the jarringly messy, unpredictable world of real life intimacy. All of this is told using deeply personal excerpts of verbatim Glee fanfiction I penned growing up. Through writing and leading this play both in a workshop at the Tank in March and in the upcoming New York Theatre Festival in July, I have been able to not only satisfy my penchant for creating outlandish comedies, but bring my work to life with a team of collaborators equally as passionate as I am. And of course pay tribute to my one true love and most loyal confidant – Glee.

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

Three qualities I feel have been vital for me while navigating this industry are tenacity, passion and the ability to somewhat objectively self critique. More often than not the path to success in the arts is blocked by obstacles, and it requires acute tenacity and perseverance to be able to navigate these and continue picking yourself back up again in the face of rejection. My biggest advice for developing a thick skin and not taking ‘no’s too personally is time. The more you put yourself out there the less personal rejection will seem and the more it will feel like going through the motions. This is where the skill of being able to gently but honestly self critique becomes invaluable. When you feel you can be a fair judge of your own work, the opinions of and reception from outside sources become less powerful, and you become your own barometer for success. Passion however is the most important asset. At the end of the day, no matter how hard your journey seems, if you are able to remind yourself that you are doing something you’re passionate about, your love of the work can help overcome the hardships. Not everyone in every career is able to lead with passion, but the biggest win of being an artist is the opportunity to make a living doing what we love.

What has been your biggest area of growth or improvement in the past 12 months?

Learning the lay of the artistic land in New York has been my biggest area of growth this past year. While in college the prospect of navigating the industry can seem intimidating and daunting – which it very much did – but once I fully immersed myself in it post graduation and learnt the different channels through which to find auditions, find short play festivals, network with fellow artists etc, I gained an invaluable handle on it. Knowledge is power, and doing your research on the different resources and support systems available to artists in whichever city you’re in is the biggest key to feeling secure and like you’re on the right track.

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Image Credits

Photographers – Charlotte Shenassa, Vaishanavi Raul, Nathaniel Johnston

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