Conversations with Leigh Culbertson

Today we’d like to introduce you to Leigh Culbertson.

Hi Leigh, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
It all started in the basement, yard, and backwoods of my childhood home in Moreland Hills, Ohio. I had 3 permanent playmates, my 1 older and 2 younger sisters, Grace, Bonnie, and Madeleine. We made up games, acted out scenes from our favorite Disney movies, wrote plays to be performed for our family on holidays, and sang in harmony anywhere and any time to what some might consider an embarrassing extent.

My first producers were my parents and grandparents, all of whom put a high value on the arts and humanities. It wasn’t until college that I came to the startling realization that not everyone puts on plays for their family at every holiday gathering. By Kindergarten I was soloing in my dance recitals, at 11 I had picked up the upright bass, and through middle school and high school I was involved in every performing art I could get my hands on.

Show choir, jazz choir, choir, Jazz Band, Marching Band, Orchestra, The Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra, and any musical that they’d let me get out of the orchestra pit to audition for. Academically, I was at the bottom of the roster at Orange School District in Pepper Pike, Ohio and the only positive recognition I got was from my participation in these “extra circulars”. During my senior year of high school, I became close with a good friend and drummer named Ben Billington who was dating my best friend and classical bassoonist, Katie Brooks.

Ben saw that my tastes and interest in music went beyond what your average millennial highschooler was into and introduced me to another side of myself by doing 3 things; introducing me to a plethora of new-to-me bands and musicians like Air, The Bad Plus, Stereolab and Brad Meldau, inviting me to join a band that was formed for the 2004 Cleveland High School Rock Off called “Dinosaur Act”, and most importantly, by inviting me into his home on Saturday nights to Jam with him and our musician friends.

I also played in our church’s praise band Sunday mornings, with his father, drummer Pete Billington. I hadn’t realized it until recently, but this series of events allowed me to take the structure, discipline, and skill I had learned from my extracurriculars and create something unique and expressive with my peers, during a time when we were processing a post-9/11 world. There were no adults (in the room) to correct us or teach us, it was just us expressing ourselves through music and that moment in an artist’s life is important beyond words.

I went off to College in Chicago at North Park University in 2004, on a bass scholarship, with the intention of becoming a “music therapist”. I had hoped to combine what I knew with something practical, but by the beginning of my second semester, I had been lured by my roommate Melanie Milton, into auditioning for the winter one acts and was cast by Peter Kersten in a Sam Shephard play called “Cowboy Mouth”. We were at a Christian University and I think he needed someone who could believably swear, that was me.

I played a character named Cavale based off of the poet, musician, and photographer, Patti Smith. This play was my introduction to a woman whose work and career became my north star. Every day after rehearsing that play, I felt amazing, I felt lighter, I felt free, and I knew I couldn’t walk away from something that made me feel that way, so I became a theater major… just like my older sister Grace. My poor parents.

It took me an extra semester to graduate from college and thank goodness it did. The capstone course that our theater professor, Chad Eric Bergman, taught that year was hand selected for the students it would be impacting, and boy did it have an impact. The course was called “Women in Theater and Performance” and it was the first real lesson I had on feminism and it was through the lens of the performing arts. I left that class and graduated from NPU with a new purpose for my creative career, “represent the under-represented”.

After College, I floated around Chicago and Cleveland and even had a quick summer stint in France where I lived in a castle and mowed the grounds. I had graduated into the great recession and like the rest of my generation, had to work multiple jobs for many years just to make ends meet. When I could, I was directing high schoolers in morality plays, grabbing indie PA gigs, and acting with/managing the touring comedy/murder mystery productions that Big Little Comedy put up every year, led by Tina Jackson.

Tina gave me my first experience as a producer and I found I had a knack for mediating creative personalities and creating a (somewhat) disciplined environment, which isn’t easy with a cast full of improvisers and comedians. The trust she put in me gave me the confidence to go after a television production career. After leaving Chicago around 2011, I headed back to Northeast Ohio and settled into the west side of Cleveland for a few years to gather myself near the safety of my family.

While there, I was unwittingly plugged into the visual arts scene in a way that I never had been before, I never had the time too! This time I couldn’t avoid it. I was dating a student at the Cleveland Institute of Art, I lived with the curator for the Progressive Insurance Art Collection, Kristen Rogers, and another roommate owned a gallery at the former American Greetings headquarters, turned gallery and studio space, 78th st studios.

The first floor of our house was an art gallery, literally, and I worked at the Cleveland Museum of art selling tickets and memberships and running events. I’m still coming to understand the impact this time of my life had on me, but it was a big one. I fell in love with Cleveland in my 20s in a way that wouldn’t have been possible had I not left and come back. The passion, integrity, history, community, love, and humility that exists in the Cleveland Arts Scene is like nothing else I’ve come across in this country.

In 2013, I came to understand that my own soul’s desire was leading me out of Ohio, and I set out to make a move to New York City and finally pursue this television production career. I started at a small reality television production company called Haymaker Inc run by Aaron Rothman and Irad Eyal. Making reality TV can be a quick, cheap and dirty process, but it provided me with a crash course in everything there is to know about making a television show from concept to air.

I became a New Yorker by plugging myself into the stand-up comedy scene and tagging along with my roommate, comedian, Jeff Steinbrunner. I took up puppeteering for film and television with Brooklyn Puppet Conspiracy and eventually I networked my way into my first job in animation as a coordinator for Goldie and Bear on Disney Jr. While there, I worked under Showrunner Chris Gilligan. In my first meeting, I watched as Chris got up on his feet to act for our animation director, Josh Greer, what he wanted the characters to do.

One Young Frankenstein reference moments later sealed the deal, I had found my people. The most important thing I learned from Chris was that every person on a production is of value, from the summer intern to the corporate executive, each one of us has a role in making sure that this will be the best version of the show that it can be. That, and to not pigeonhole myself into any one creative genre. Chris himself is a stop motion animator turned TV developer.

While working on Goldie and Bear, I met character designer and painter, Justin Runfola. We became an item and not long after my role on Goldie ended, the dreaded NYC to LA animation career pipeline was knocking at our door. We made the move together in 2018 and upon arrival, I was offered a job at WB as an assistant production manager for the reboot of Animaniacs.

Animaniacs was a dream job. By the end of my 4 years on that show as the senior coordinator for our story and editorial departments, I had sat in reviews and at the feet of some of the industry’s best masters of their creative craft, Wellesley Wild, Gabe Swarr, Roman Laney, Phillip Malamuth, Genevieve Tsai, Sara Sherman, Rob Paulsen, Jess Harnell, Tress McNeille, Maurice LaMarche, Frank Welker and even Steven Spielberg through his occasional, succinct creative notes.

With everything they taught me in hand, I decided to end that season at WB when the show wrapped up in order to pursue writing full-time. At this point, I was a year into an important creative partnership with friend and fellow North Park University Theater Major, Joseph Giovannetti.

After he graduated from Northwestern with a master’s in screenwriting, I asked him at the beginning of 2021 if he’d be interested in writing a movie with me. I pitched him the idea and he gave me the first of many “Yes and’s” that would turn our friendship into a storytelling machine, so by the spring of 2022, I knew I could place my chips on that.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
No! I think if I took the time to list all the obstacles I’ve faced in detail, we’d be here for a while. I’ve had several false starts where I had to turn around and head back to Mom and Dad’s house, empty bank accounts that had me selling clothes, books, and other crap, the ending of several romantic relationships, and too many dark nights of the soul to count.

I feel my emotions to their fullest extent and learning the mental tools to appropriately express those feelings, however painful they may get, is one of the most important and time consuming investments I have made. When moving to New York, I came up with the motto of my career, “Take action, have faith”, it’s all any of us can do if we intend to move forward.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Currently, I’m writing scripts, developing television shows and feature films, networking, and pitching to studios with my writing partner Joe Giovannetti. Individually, I’m recording an album, doing stand-up comedy and writing Poetry. My specialty, as corny as it sounds, is humanity. I’ve traveled to the US and abroad, had every odd job you can think of and I’m always trying to meet new people, have new experiences, and broaden my horizons to challenge my belief systems.

Most recently I was in Arizona learning from a friend how to properly handle, care for and shoot a wide range of guns, something I previously had no interest in and had quite a bit of fear around, but no longer. At this point in my career, I’m most known for working in Animation production and most notably on Animaniacs, which suits me just fine. Zany and absurd storytelling is my jam, there is no need to take life seriously, not one bit, all of it is absurd.

I’d say I’m most proud of the partnership I’ve created with Joe, you rarely find someone that understands how your creative brain ticks, and creating this partnership was a process that by no means happened overnight. But what sets me apart from others is my own, personal, unique, perspective. I often hear artists talk about how they “shouldn’t” pursue a creative career because, “there are already enough (fill in the creative job blank)”, which just isn’t the point of making art.

The point of making art is that not one single other person has lived your life or felt your feelings but you. Your point of view is what makes your art yours and the product that comes out of the process of using your creative toolbox to express that unique POV is simply the result of a new understanding. That new understanding is all that is required from you. Maybe what sets me apart is that I finally understand this, it took me a while.

We’d love to hear about how you think about risk-taking.
Every move I have made toward my career goals has been a major risk in someone’s eyes, if not my own. You can’t move forward or grow without taking those leaps and seeing where you land. In taking risks you find out what you are truly capable of and it turns out I’m capable of much more than a report card ever taught me to believe I was.

A little over a year ago, I discovered that a lot of my struggles are the result of a neurodivergent brain, in my case it’s what is currently known as inattentive ADHD, but from a young age, it was clear that my brain didn’t work the same as my peers. I was playing Vivaldi, Beethoven and Bach, understood complex harmonies and rhythms, and could memorize dialogue and choreography, but could barely complete a math equation.

My mother and father saw this and got me the help I needed, even without an official diagnosis. They taught me that there’s always another way of looking at a personal problem, there’s always a way to find support and to make a difficult task a little easier on yourself, and that I am worthy of that support and of that ease.

For me, going to school every day for 17 yrs felt like a risk, so what’s it to me if I take several hundred more? I’m used to it.

Contact Info:

• Website: leighculbertson.com
• Instagram: @leigh.culbertson
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/leighculbertson/
• Twitter: @leighsnamehere

Image Credits
Marcel Vocino