Active materials are those in which individual, uncoordinated local stresses drive the material out of equilibrium on a global scale. Examples of such assemblies can be seen across scales from schools of fish to the cellular cytoskeleton and underpin many important biological processes. Synthetic experiments that recapitulate the essential features of such active systems have been the object of study for decades as their simple rules allow us to elucidate the physical underpinnings of collective motion. One system of particular interest has been active nematic liquid crystals (LCs). Because of their well understood passive physics, LCs provide a rich platform to interrogate the effects of active stress. The flows and steady-state structures that emerge in active LCs have been understood to result from a competition between nematic elasticity and the local activity. However most investigations of such phenomena consider only the magnitude of the elastic resistance and active drive and not their microscopic origins. In this thesis we utilize experiments as well as computer simulations and novel analytical techniques to investigate how the microscopic origins of activity and elasticity in a LC affect the resultant flow. Specifically we query a liquid crystal composed of short actin filaments -- the load bearing protein fibers inside of cells -- that are driven by myosin motors. We show that by limiting motor activity to one region of the LC we can constrain and direct otherwise chaotic flows. We show that increases in the nematic's bend elasticity caused by alterations in filament length drive the material into an exotic steady state where "elasticity bands" dominate the structure and dynamics. Furthermore, we introduce a novel analytical technique that extends the method of correlation functions to measure material responses from experimental data. Finally, we show that the very nature of the action of a molecular motor inextricably couples activity and material elasticity.