Meet Eliza Gill

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

Eliza, first a big thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and insights with us today. I’m sure many of our readers will benefit from your wisdom, and one of the areas where we think your insight might be most helpful is related to imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is holding so many people back from reaching their true and highest potential and so we’d love to hear about your journey and how you overcame imposter syndrome.

It’s funny because I feel like an imposter answering this question about overcoming imposter syndrome. I’m incredibly lucky to have a supportive network of friends and artists around me. Whenever I feel like my writing or performances aren’t authentic I usually do two things; I turn to my community and ask for critiques and I ask myself “would 10 year old me think what I am doing is cool?”. I’m fortunate to have a community of artists who are not only uplifting individuals but honest one’s. If something isn’t working they aren’t afraid to point it out and offer ways to make it work. I’m very fortunate to be surrounded by a love based community. It’s easy to indulge insecurities as an artist but thankfully I have friends I can turn to who’d rather shine a light on what’s beautiful about what we’re making than what’s not meeting societal expectations. I actually feel like I’m finally in a place where the art myself and my friends are participating in isn’t just defying what is socially acceptable but going a step further to flash the crowd and spotlight the ugly, weird, beautiful parts of the world we’ve been told not to highlight. Being surrounded that kind of daring optimism really helps keep my insecurities at bay.
As for consulting that kid in 2006, they know what’s cool. When I was ten I didn’t care about how I looked, if what I said made sense or if what I was doing was stupid. There wasn’t any shame in proclaiming something as “cool”. The worms crawling over the pavement after the rain were cool, the group of punks with bright orange mohawks on the museum steps were more interesting than the statue they smoked their cigarettes under. I trust the taste of a kind ten year old in New York in 2006 more than this twenty eight year old in Los Angeles in 2024.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I try my best! Jack of all trades and master of none is the energy I try to bring to the party. I started out acting in New York then worked for a few years in television production. With the pandemic and a few other life altering events, I decided to burn the life I made to move to Los Angeles to pursue writing and acting full time. It’s the scariest and best decision I’ve ever made, I may never financially recover.
For the past two years I’ve been working on Witch Hazel, which started as a solo show with the Hollywood Fringe in 2023 and has now began to grow into a short series for television. Grief has been a constant presence in my life and I’ve made it my mission to tell stories that highlight the beauty that is found within the storm. Witch Hazel is a story that reflects my own journey with loss. In 2020 I lost one of the most important people in my life in an accident. The last place I wanted to be was in this new reality and I ran as far as I could to avoid it. When Witch Hazel started to form in 2022 I was able to create a character who could literally leave their reality and go on adventures with their late brother. This writing process has been a journey that helped me learn to live side by side with my grief and I’ve found that others who’ve experienced loss have seen themselves in this story which as an artist brings me a lot of joy.
I don’t think this answered the question, I don’t have a product to sell just stories to tell.

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?

Oh man. It feels so overdone to say this but resilience is a quality that has taken me through the past decade of this artistic journey. Partly why I’m so attached to Witch Hazel as a title is for the plant we got our namesake from, it’s one of the most resilient flowering plants native to the northeast. It has healing properties as well as spiritual (dowsing rods are traditionally witch hazel) that help people while also being resilient to its climate. As someone from the Northeast who’s had to be resilient and made it this far in life against the odds, I feel it’s a fitting title.
Another thing I’ve come to value in life as well as art is silliness. Being free to be silly and free from embarrassment has been so liberating. Acting, theater, performance is all about play! It’s supposed to be fun! Art is supposed to effect its audience and I feel it’s most effective when the people creating it are joyful in their process. The third thing I’ve learned is to embrace fear. Don’t ignore it or let it take over but embrace the adrenaline. Learning how to alchemize my anxiety into energy to create was a game changer. If I feel afraid before stepping onstage or saying my first line after action I know how to channel that into the energy the character is needing in that moment, if that makes sense? I’m scared all the time, I sleep with a nightlight and jump at loud noises. When it comes to fight or flight, I fly. But learning to almost Opposite Day that response and run towards what is scaring me has given me the confidence to do even scarier things. So as far as what advice I have it’s do it scared. If you have an idea you feel it’d be stupid to put it into writing, you probably should write it out. It might be terrible and actually really stupid but if you hadn’t written it you wouldn’t be able to see the spots where the story shines, where the stupid turns to silly and there’s suddenly room to play between the lines. Failure is everything, we’re all going to fail. It’s about what you do after you fall that matters. Personally I love getting back up and running harder so the next time I fall it’s even more spectacular.

Awesome, really appreciate you opening up with us today and before we close maybe you can share a book recommendation with us. Has there been a book that’s been impactful in your growth and development?

This is hard. I love reading I’ve always been able to escape into a book. The Hobbit has never left my mind, I usually day dream away from the world into The Shire. But I’d say the His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman really shaped me as a kid and creative. The main character of the story Lyra starts seeking adventure. Climbing to the highest points of Oxford College and never flinching from a fight. It’s a story that taught me the importance friendship and pushing past the reality we know, to fight for something better. Another book that contributed to my mold is The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy by Douglas Adams. It’s a book that showed me there’s no real rules when it comes to telling a tale as long as the reader keeps reading the story goes on. It’s a book that instilled the value of absurdity in my work and reminded me that most sound piece of advice anyone can be given in any situation is simply;
Don’t Panic.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/elizagill?fbclid=PAAaYc6zW_PXEAlg5ztKzzV6-TxOLAVjpUISibVqN2Fjks3N_8VfZBeMbvUGk_aem_Ab_LSyJcbj-Kfo1kU_NN2-R2Zt_0idrhSdac15o2i4VW5OJDl0qpp37MHTOW16DwYZg
• Instagram: @elizasnarrative

Image Credits

Brandon Dougherty