Circles Rise, Part Two
Shannon Burkett: Filmmaker, Actor, Writer, Mom, Nurse
Dear Reader,
This week, I am posting ahead in order to save the usual Friday post for a special Thanksgiving message. 2024 was a tough year for sure, but there’s a lot to be grateful for, including friendship, and I plan to post a juicy list.
Today I want to show you another circle of female creators and shine a light on my beautiful and brilliant friend Shannon Burkett. Shannon can do anything. Actor, writer, filmmaker, mom, breast cancer survivor and nurse practitioner, she is incredible.
I first saw Shannon on stage in Stupid Kids, a queer homage to Rebel Without A Cause, written by the late John C. Russell (also featuring our beloved friends Mandy Siegfried and Keith Nobbs).
Shannon and I came up together in the New York theater along with our friend Jenny Maguire. (Jenny is featured in a short I wrote and co-produced, Pretty Doesn’t Hurt). We came of age at a time in which it could be perilous to be a woman in the wrong place at the wrong time. The film industry—and New York theater, for that matter—were unforgiving. We helped each other navigate. A strong circle of female friends felt a little like the Marauders Map in Harry Potter; we could help guide each other away from danger.
And then we grew up! Or as Yvonne Woods (Ramona) likes to say, “we grew each other up.”
One of the great joys of 2023 was the unintentional reunion when Shannon and I were both programmed at the Woodstock Film Festival—and Jenny was coming to see our films. Shannon’s hilarious animated musical short My Vagina played the same weekend as Ramona At Midlife.
BB: Tell our readers about you and your work as an actor, writer, filmmaker. How you came up in the industry and what you do.
SB: As a young actor, I observed first-hand how the entertainment industry perpetuated the fallacious argument that women have limited palates. Hollywood stuffed our faces full of mawkish fairytales and insipid romcoms because that is what we desired. Right? I was so confused by the term “liberal Hollywood” because to me this business seemed to be eternally stuck in the 1950s. Even the love of my life, theater, turned trips to the mailbox into punches in the gut as I received flyer after flyer of productions with all male casts and creative teams plastered on the front. But when women created work for ourselves, we were accused of creating a “vanity project.”
My son was diagnosed with lead poisoning when he was nine-months old, and I didn’t think I could keep up the socializing needed to work as an actor, so I went back to school for nursing. I wanted a career where I could satiate my science-brain, give back to others, and understand what was happening to my son. After being diagnosed with breast cancer, I took the plunge and really started writing and haven’t stopped. Cancer made me give way less fucks about what others thought, which was incredibly freeing.
Now I work as an actor, writer, filmmaker, and a registered nurse specializing in lactation in the NICU as well as raising three kids. All the different hats I wear compliment different parts of my personality and creative-self and they intertwine and inform each other.
BB: What inspires you? And how has your work evolved while raising three kids?
SB: The heart of my work has always revolved around the lives of women and how we must navigate this world that puts tremendous pressure on us while, by design, disempowering us at the same time. My kids inspire me and make me a better artist. The characters I create and the themes I explore come out of my life experiences. It is often how I process what is going on around me.
BB: I loved your short! Tell us about (1) where it came from, (2) the process of making it, and (3) what you learned sharing it with audiences on the festival circuit?
SB: The larger project—that my short, My Vagina, is birthed from—is a musical which is a thinly veiled allegory of the Trump administration told through grammar school politics. Conjuring this musical kept my sanity intact while providing patient care as a nurse in a NYC hospital during the pandemic. As the Trump Administration became more and more Draconian, I would weave the absurdities into this story about a narcissistic principal who ruled over her school with an all-too-familiar petulance and malignancy.
While the audience can enjoy the piece without drawing the political parallels, the themes will still resonate and make us question any leader who insists on absolute loyalty. Comedy gives us permission to laugh when we want to cry but also injects us with the courage to stand up and say, “Hey! That IS ridiculous AND wrong!” The pen might be mightier than the sword, but comedy can undo kings.
I’ve been taking a multi-platform approach with my work, and I started to envision this musical also as a stop-motion film or TV show. To test out this hypothesis, I chose a song that could be self-contained but also push the boundaries of what was possible, and that was, of course, My Vagina.
Leaning on my musical theatre friends, I asked for some recommendations and was very lucky to land the powerhouse Dee Roscioli, who is currently starring in Titanique. And I found Neil Burns just by going down an intense rabbit-hole-esque Internet search. He’s Canadian and felt it was his neighborly duty to do what he could to fight Trump. Neil is one of those rare artistic collaboration finds. We’re working on another proof of concept for the pilot with Stop Motion Productions. I pitch the TV show as “South Park for women.”
BB: What are you working on next?
SB: I’ve just finished the recording the dialogue and song for a new proof-of-concept from the pilot Perfect Little School. The gorgeous uber-talented Jenny Maguire, and a knock-out kid (who just graduated 6th grade) are my cast. This kid’s voice is nothing like I’ve ever heard before. Neil is busy creating the character designs and conceptualizing the animatics. My musical The Female Pope, which I’ve been working with on with Heather Christian, just won the Pipeline Arts Award and that honor came with a presentation by The New Group at The Signature Theater. I see that piece as an animated film, and Neil and a team of young animators created spectacular designs and animatics.
BB: Anything else you want to talk about?
SB: Yes! I have just come back from The Woodstock Film Festival. Last year, I was there with My Vagina, and this year with my son, Cooper, who created a short doc called Forever Chemical about his experience with lead poisoning and how it fuels him as an advocate. I’m so proud of this kid. We’ve been working with different organizations on passing new laws and allocating funding to enforce the laws that are already on the books. He’s provided testimony at a hearing before lawmakers here in NYC and we’ve taken numerous trips to Albany to lobby for these bills. Three of the bills passed in 2023 but there is one bill, The Lead Paint Right to Know Act, that has not passed that could have prevented him from getting sick.
His film is about lobbying for the bill and how it got stuck in committee and never made it to the floor for a vote in 2024. We’re hoping to educate audiences with our film and encourage them to contact their representatives and ask them to please support The Lead Paint Right to Know Act in 2025.
Woodstock FF has always been on the forefront, supporting films that have social justice themes, and I cannot imagine a more perfect for his World Premiere. This is a perfectly preventable disease that effects thousands of children in New York State every year. It is time to put an end to the suffering.
BB: One more question. Where do you find your collaborators, and what inspires you?
SB: Jenny is an incredible source for collaborators. She has like a pocket full of talented friends that she can recommend. There were so many times when I was writing and ready to throw in the towel, but Jenny kept encouraging me. I really do credit her with providing me the support I needed to become a writer. Our whole group is so inspiring to me. We endured unrelenting sexism (and have the scars to prove it!) in the early part of our career; I wish I could go back and tell our younger selves to band together and just make shit because we have the right to no matter what anyone says. This fabulous group of women is fierce, and we’re fighters, and we have seen so much and lived through tumultuous times and we’re going to have to baton down the hatches and steer this ship into this new unknown. Cause there are storms ahead!
Thanks for reading! Next issue, we’ll take a deep dive into modern friendship with the author of Modern Friendship, Anna Goldfarb!
Take good care of yourselves. There is so much ahead, good and perilous both. Mostly though, your voice is needed. You’re not done.
Love,
Brooke