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

Hi Gail , thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

I have wanted to tell stories for as long as I can remember. I’ve always been an eager performer and an avid reader– a believer in the transformative power of stories to bring joy, comfort, and community from a very young age– but I think I was in the third grade that the indie feature film, “Dinner & A Movie”, was shooting in my hometown.

I had just been officially bitten by the acting bug after playing a particularly compelling role in the school play (there were sword fights and giants) and had played the Scottish King at Shakespeare camp that summer when I was offered an audition for a small role in the film.

It’s the first time I remember feeling like a professional. It’s also an incredibly vivid memory for my senses– I recall how the audition room smelled, and the time of day it was according to the bright light filtering through the small window, and I remember the intense, unfamiliar presence of the camera that was taping me during my audition. Something in my young mind knew that this was serious play. It was the first time I felt a grown-up sense of professional responsibility in my interactions with others.

I booked the part and, perhaps to my mother’s frustration as she had to bring my two younger brothers with us, I got to spend several days on a professional film set shooting the project. The actress playing my mother in the film was incredibly generous in showing me around, letting me ask lots of questions, and telling me about her experiences on other projects. And I was taking notes.

The first scene I shot had a lot of kids in it and I remember that we did a lot of takes (I’m sure it was chaos) and I loved the process of retelling a moment over and over until the director was satisfied. I loved living and re-living this mini-snippet of a make-believe story and the coming together of so many creative people to play the game of make-believe with such integrity.

The other major scene we shot was a funeral scene where I was the only child– that day was much smoother and also had a completely different tone. I remember being very moved by all the emotional energy of the scene. I absolutely loved that all these grown-ups were playing this story with such commitment again and again, and that this was their job.

From that experience forward, I had intense clarity that this was what I wanted to do forever– tell stories professionally.

Gail , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I choose to professionally identify as a Storyteller. I do many creative things that consistently fall under that umbrella, but currently, most days I narrate audiobooks. I have a background in theatre and film acting, and still do that work from time to time, as well as puppetry, puppet building & designing, modeling, other forms of voice over, devising, writing, and producing.

I am most interested in what happens in the space between our individual experiences as beings on this earth, bridging the gaps amongst us through telling stories and creating spaces for them to be witnessed. After nearly 25 years of training in storytelling in many forms, I’ve found the confidence and developed the skills to fill the various containers I encounter in terms of genre and medium with a consistent and thorough substance appropriate to the story at hand. I largely attribute this confidence to my time at my graduate acting program; The Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. That was the place and time in my life when I really learned to respect and integrate the marriage of the diligent practice of my craft with the magic of serious, yet curious play.

I do my best to take this philosophy into all of my work as a storyteller, but am most proud of how the work I continue to develop with my creative partner (and BOVTS classmate), Kaiya Jones, honors the dichotomy of a regular, disciplined practice and the magic of spontaneous, childlike wonder.

For me, wonder and awe are what is on the other side of fear and worry — the things that often stop us from creating. I remember coming across this thought from G.K. Chesterton in an English class in high school: “The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder”. It really struck me and stuck with me. When we are afraid, when we are closed off because we feel scared, or unsafe, or threatened, or limited in some way– let us get curious, let us look out of ourselves in awe and with an open mind and heart– just like breathing, we need the balance of both in and out in order to keep going, keep changing, keep growing.

As storytellers, we are the channels that help all process the larger growth and changes of the world around us… we breathe the world in with curiousity and a unique perspective, we process it and marvel at it and work to make sense of it, or to make questions about it, and then through our various methods and skills, we offer it back up and out into the world on a creative exhale. This cycle is in constant dialogue with itself throughout time and space. To be a storyteller is a position of service.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

There are many ways to support artists, creatives, and a thriving creative ecosystem. I think a very simple one, no matter where in the world you are or what means you may have to elevate others, is to simply stop for a second and take stock of how many moments in your day are elevated by the creative power of other human beings– perhaps it’s the innovative genius of the designers and engineers of your phone or alarm clock that wakes you up in the morning, or the music you choose to listen to as you get ready for your day. Perhaps it’s the graphic designer who created the label on your bag of coffee, or the baker who made your bread. Maybe you can’t stop thinking about that episode of television you watched last night or you appreciate the color choices in the fabric of your jacket. Maybe it’s the novel you read on your commute or a photo that always catches you in the lobby where you work. Anything human made that evokes a curious or pleasurable reaction in your daily routine is a product of creativity and artistry.

Human creativity is all around us, and it’s in each of us. But to produce creative work and art takes effort and skill. Once we all start to value creativity and art as a universal inheritance and integral part of our existence, I think we’ll naturally do a better job of prioritizing it with our respect, our votes, our dollars, and our power to lift it up.

The other great thing you can do for artists and creatives right now is to share a creative’s work that you appreciate with someone you love. You can buy their work, of course, but you can also just drop their name into a conversation or pass on a link to their website, socials, or newest project. Most artists thrive on having an audience and building a network that resonates with their work. If you like or appreciate someone’s work or just want to help foster a thriving creative ecosystem, make it a personal mission to discover one new artist that you like weekly (or monthly, or daily, or whatever) and share that person/ their work with a friend or two.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I’m not sure I would consider this a pivot, so much as a catalyst– but the silver lining of the very challenging and devastating year that was 2020, was that I suddenly had a somewhat forced focus or limitation to how I could exist and create in the world and I put all my eggs into the voice over basket.

I had the time, and no where else to be, I had the stir crazy energy, my cost of living had somewhat stabilized between never leaving our apartment and receiving unemployment checks from the government, and I was able to throw all my energy into getting my voice over career off the ground. And it went really well. I suppose it was one of those “when opportunity meets preparation” lucky moments in life.

I had already done several audiobooks at that point and was studying with some great commercial voice over teachers here in New York. I’d just built a new studio in my closet after a couple months getting on my feet in the new city ( freshly out of grad school) and was ready to start auditioning. I also happened to reap the benefits of the very generous voice over community in that first year of lock down– the opportunities to learn, connect, and be heard were boundless. Within the year, I’d gone full-time in voice over, mostly as an audiobook narrator, and finally realized my childhood dream of telling stories and seriously; curiously playing make-believe as a way to make a living.

If the pandemic hadn’t changed my world, and the world at large, the way that it did I don’t know that things would have gone this way and gone this way so quickly. But in every way I am so grateful that I’m here every day.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.gailshalan.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/grshalan/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gail-shalan-89398a52
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/grshalan
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@grshalan

Image Credits
Maria Kazikhanov