Today we’d like to introduce you to Brianna Barrett.
Hi Brianna, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I took, and continue to take, a circuitous route through the arts. At 21, I wrote and shot a TV pilot and moved out here knowing no one. Within a year, I was represented at ICM and teamed up with production companies like Stuber to pitch my series to networks like NBC. I got my first paid job writing a TV script for Michael Wortsman, the former president of Univision. I was in the right place at the right time a lot – but then I got cancer.
What a plot twist!
It was fine. I was 24. I reconnected with my roots back in Portland. I made little documentaries about my treatment and engaging with my love of stories in a new way. I stopped taking myself so seriously. Life’s too short. I also became more driven than ever to hurry up and do anything and everything I’ve ever wanted to. Because, again, life’s too short.
I joined storytelling troupes where I seized the opportunity to produce a variety show, co-write and perform a children’s theater piece, and tell stories on stages like the Pickathon or Folklife Festival. Once I wrote and memorized 3 separate hour-long monologues for one festival in one week. I probably should not have done that. I’m also glad I did.
I found a home with LineStorm Playwrights, where I developed new work at Artists Repertory Theater. I found another home at Oregon Health & Science University, where I launched a weekly writing program for cancer patients and survivors. I joined non-profit boards, presented at health conferences and universities, and traveled around the country, filming content for Teen Cancer America. Then, I moved back to LA to complete an MFA at UCLA.
Over the pandemic, I received a grant from the Regional Arts and Culture Council to adapt a historical play I wrote into a radio play, partnered with a producer from LitHub’s Storybound podcast, and was commissioned to develop a multi-episode podcast adaptation of my solo show, True Love and Other Noncommunicable Diseases, for Bag & Baggage Productions.
Now, I’ve graduated from my MFA program, and I’m exploring the next steps of my career. Right now what that means is shopping around a fabulous TV pilot, CANCER CULTURE, which I wrote with a very funny comedian named Becky Braunstein — we’re both cancer survivors, we met in a cancer support group, and the show is about a ragtag group of people in their 20s and 30s navigating life and dating and careers and friendships all while being in various states of treatment and remission. Can’t stress enough how much we need representation that treats us like the real, hilarious people that we are! In addition to that, I’m also co-writing a musical called THE LUCKY BREAK with a talented and lovely composer and lyricist, Tracey Singer. It’s a show about a bunch of college kids who win a massive lottery and how it ruins their lives, essentially. Surprisingly funny AND dark! We had the opportunity to record some demo tracks at Track Star Studios and now we’re actively taking them out with the script to seek collaborators, representation, financing, all the things.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
When I was diagnosed with cancer in my early 20s, I realized first-hand what it felt like to be looking for encouraging narratives in the media and coming up with nothing. I’d never seen a movie about a cancer patient that didn’t die, so I figured I should make one. Of course, that meant I had to survive in order to finish the project. They say life imitates art, don’t they? I had to hope so.
When I started speaking at fundraisers, I’d never been on stage before – and truth be told, I’d always been uncomfortable sharing the personal details of my life. But there I was, telling the story of my cancer diagnosis, joking wryly about my chemo infusions, my adventures in wig shopping, and my awkward dates with guys from the internet who didn’t know I had cancer.
I spoke at a lot of events — whether it’s Relay for Life or Leukemia Lymphoma Society or high schools or medical conferences at OHSU. I was obsessed with Tig Notaro so I really approached it like stand-up. It all started at an annual fundraiser for the HHH Foundation – a local nonprofit in my hometown of Portland, named for a young man who’d died of cancer a decade earlier. His surviving family attended the event, which I didn’t know until after, thank goodness. His sister later told me that, while watching me on stage that night, she saw her father laugh for the first time since her brother died.
Her words had a profound impact on my life. There is no more powerful motivator than knowing I possess the ability to change someone’s life for the better.
I went on to develop True Love and Other Noncommunicable Diseases, a mixed-media solo performance piece about film and illness and trying to find love. When I performed this piece at a school, a three-year-old girl with leukemia was thrilled by my bone marrow biopsy jokes. She told me she was going to start making videos about her cancer too! At theaters and festivals, I heard from people of all ages, races, and walks of life that they felt I was telling their story too.
Earlier in my career, I was more interested in lampooning cultural norms than in sharing something personal and deeply felt. I originally moved to LA in 2010 and found myself writing frat-boy comedies. Cancer forced me to be vulnerable. Once I discovered that side of myself, I found there was community and strength on the other end.
Today, my work comes directly out of that desire to spark a feeling of unity between strangers. I aim to craft stories that put people at ease – not through escapism or an appeal to the lowest common denominator, but by shining a light directly at the hard, messy parts of being human and letting those be the things that connect us.
When I’m not writing about illness, my work tends to focus on gender, sexuality, and identity. I like stories about the parts of ourselves we can’t change. Along the way, audience reactions continue to inspire me. At a Q&A for one of my plays, 36 Perfectly Appropriate Mealtime Conversations, a 17-year-old stood up to say his friend had recently come out to him, and my play helped change his feelings about it. An older man then stood up to say he, too, felt new compassion after seeing the play. And we got there by laughing together! This is why I keep writing.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
As a writer, I’ve always been compelled to write about identity crisis. My first play, “36 Perfectly Appropriate Mealtime Conversations” was a gender-bendy sex comedy wherein all the actors swapped roles every night to change the context of what is being said. “Florence Fane in San Francisco” is about a real-life 1860s journalist trying to make it as a female writer in a man’s world while contending with her sexy gossip columnist alter ego (who appears as a separate person on stage that wants to talk over her life). “Still Harvey Still” explores addiction and illness within the frame of a tropey body-swap comedy. “Acts of Creation” uses GPT2 (before GPT3 became all the rage!) to look at family, legacy and what we leave behind. “Moderates” fictionalizes the Whiskey Wars of 1970s Portland, Oregon to comment on modern-day protest movements and how white feminists have historically excluded and marginalized other groups while fighting for something that is still technically progress. Suffice to say, I’m just really interested in plays that ask big questions about who we think we are and why we’re probably wrong.
Do you have recommendations for books, apps, blogs, etc?
Oh my gosh, I’m a huge podcast fan. Some favorites include 99 Percent Invisible, Radio Lab, This American Life, The Heart, American Hysteria, You’re Wrong About, Decoder Ring, Search Engine, and many more. I also read a lot of plays (in addition to GOING to a lot of plays). Some of my favorite plays include Cock by Mike Bartlett, Self Defense or the Death of Some Salesmen by Carson Kreitzer, Punkplay by Gregory Moss, Heroes of the Fourth Turning by Will Arbery, Father Comes Home from the Wars by Suzan-Lori Parks and Appropriate by Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins. But it’s really hard to name my favorite plays because there are so many I love and refer to frequently.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.briannabarrett.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brianna_bear/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/briannabarrett/
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