Feedback from Kemiyondo Coutinho and Jonterri Gadson
PANCAKES & WAFFLES written by Monet Mike (comedy pilot)
Fresh out of high school, Gillian Scott accepts a job at a local diner not knowing its colorful staff would start as wild strangers but morph into a unique family she didn’t know she needed.
Featuring Iliana Rivera, Brooks Brantly, Conni Marie Brazelton, Candace Thomas, Oneké Cummings, Elena Campbell Martínez, Jernard Burks, Rod McLachlan, Jerome Beck, Peter Pasco, and Courtney Gabrielle Williams
Monet Mike is a writer, producer, and director from Decatur, Georgia. As a screenwriter, Monet’s mission is to carefully craft stories through a multi-perspective lens that humanizes people and concepts society often avoids in conversation and lifestyle. As an independent filmmaker, Monet began Glory James Productions to produce original series and features that invigorate minds and cultivate conversations with the goal of positively impacting our local and global community through art with purpose.
THE NO DAY written by Gita Reddy & Jessica Jiji (comedic short film)
It’s show — or rather, international conference — time! and a fed-up assistant mistaken for several of the eccentric attendees plays along at the risk of missing the chance to connect with the one person who actually gets her.
Featuring Ellen D. Williams, Napoleon Tavale, Jamila Webb, Peter Pasco, Ser Anzoategui, Elena Campbell Martínez, Tamika Simpkins, Newton Kaneshiro, Alberto Isaac, and Karen Huie
As a writer and director, Gita Reddy is drawn to the charismatic complexities and intrinsic humor of large ensembles. Plus, they’re never boring! She started out on the opposite end, in solo-ish writing and performing, and has been published in Tokens?: The NYC Asian American Experience On Stage (Temple University Press) also receiving a fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts. As an actor, you may know her from I Think You Should Leave, All Rise, and recurrings on Never Have I Ever, Orange Is the New Black, The Mindy Project, Marvel’s Iron Fist, and Adam Ruins Everything. Voiceover includes the Indie Spirit award-winning 7 Days and the Oscar-winning Zootopia. Theatre acting credits include: Sundance Lab, Getty Villa, Old Globe, City Theatre (Pittsburgh), Mixed Blood (Minneapolis) and in NYC: Cherry Lane, Target Margin and Clubbed Thumb. Training includes the Public’s Shakespeare Lab; improv at iO West, Magnet and UCB; and a fellowship with New York Theatre Workshop in Casting and Artistic Management. She was born in Canada, grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, has an M.A. in Cinema Studies from New York University, and loves watching the hummingbirds get all territorial in her tiny garden.
Jessica Jiji grew up in New York City roaming the streets to the shock and fury of her Arab father, who came from a time and place where women never left the house without a veil and a man. But he also passed along a deep appreciation for the wondrous aspects of Arab culture that she now cherishes. She eventually honored her refugee father by returning to his lost homeland — Iraq — as a speechwriter for the UN Secretary-General. Working at the United Nations has convinced her entertainment contributes as much to peace as diplomacy. The author of three published novels (two translated into Italian), she studied screenwriting with Roadmap Writers and Jill Chamberlain, earning the Page Gold Prize and other accolades. Skateboarding with her three sons is totally worth the nine-inch metal plate holding her arm together.
