I would love to talk with others about finding representation and producers for my two contemporary coming-of-age dance dramas, FIREBIRD and BUZZ. I have an MFA in Fiction but have found that screenwriting is the best medium for many of my stories as they tend to be very visual. Having studied dance for ten years and as a longtime devotee of the dance movie genre, I wrote FIREBIRD and BUZZ to showcase young, gifted and bold female dancers who use their art not just as spectacle – though there is plenty of that – but to tell a story-within-a-story: the Firebird Ballet and the myth of Persephone, respectively. Casting should be diverse and exhilarating! I’m a dual American-French citizen, and also a citizen of the Cherokee Nation -- FIREBIRD is set in the Cherokee Nation, OK and the Camargue, South of France (the cowboy and Gypsy heart of France); I hope to find U.S., Canadian and French/European producers.
FIREBIRD is also an homage to the first American prima ballerina, Maria Tallchief, who found fame in France dancing The Firebird ballet, choreographed by her husband, George Balanchine. The grand finale Indigenous fusion choreography was inspired by Rulan Tangen of the award-winning Dancing Earth; Rulan was my generous consultant for those dance scenes. The screenplay is endorsed by the Cherokee Nation, and has Montreal director Michel Poulette attached.
BUZZ explores contemporary women’s issues through the lens of myth and fact. Set in San Francisco, BUZZ is about an outspoken but vulnerable beekeeping dancer who pursues love and the limelight with her feminist punk diva pal while a serial killer pursues them -- to his own death: THELMA AND LOUISA meet the ZODIAC!
Other ideas I’d love to discuss and collaborate on: JUNE ROSE, a TV series concept about a mixed-blood Anglo-Cherokee woman who pulls her mostly unwilling family along with her on her journey from 1960s suburban housewife to early ‘70s feminist and social justice activist. A biopic of Wanda Jackson, the Queen of Rockabilly. A fictional drama about a Louisa May Alcott we have not seen before. A TV series about an ex-nun whose in vitro baby is now a rebellious teenager who, through her rock music school, introduces her mother to the one man she hoped never to meet: the father of her daughter. SPABULOUS, a comedy about a massage therapist who overhears her wealthy clients in the steam bath planning evictions from their city houses and uses all her wiles to thwart them – resulting in their funding a spa for low income and homeless mothers. (I’m a 20-years licensed massage therapist and instructor, living and working in high rent SF where I raised two kids with my French fishmonger husband). THE GREAT HIGHWAY -- TV series about a struggling French-American family who opens a restaurant with one year to prove themselves, set in the westernmost fog-bound surf-grunge part of San Francisco.
Thank you for reading, and I look forward to meeting you!