Bio – Lab 2023 Virtual

RespectAbility Entertainment Professionals Lab, Summer 2023

Andrés Orellana

Andrés Orellana is a first-generation visual storyteller. Hailing from East Hollywood, Los Angeles, they currently work as the Assistant Video Editor at the Los Angeles Times. Before coming to the LA Times, they interned for multiple media companies ranging from the prestigious Jamel Gaines Creative Outlet Dance Theatre of Brooklyn to daytime’s No. 1 talk show, “Live with Kelly and Ryan.” After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in journalism, design and film production from The New School in New York City, he works with collective creatives on telling stories centered around Queer identity, community, memory, and cultural preservation. His work has been screened around festivals such as New Filmmakers Los Angeles, Astoria Film Festival, Hollywood Shorts Fest.
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RespectAbility Entertainment Professionals Lab, Summer 2023

April Aguilera

After earning a BFA in the lucrative career of Musical theater, April Aguilera started a family in her current city of Savannah Georgia. Her second daughter, Paloma, was born with the unexpected birth diagnosis of Down syndrome and nothing was ever the same again. April processed her daughter’s diagnosis through creating, and opened her one woman dramatic musical, A Sea Full of Stars, in New York in 2019 and was invited to perform at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe when the world came to a screeching halt. April was then accepted into The Savannah College of Art and Design to pursue a graduate degree in screenwriting. While in graduate school she shot her multi Student Emmy award-winning drama film, For Paloma. April currently has two other films optioned, and has worked in film and television coordinating for Showtime and Array.
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RespectAbility Entertainment Professionals Lab, Summer 2023

Brian Koukol

Brian Koukol is an award-winning author, prose writer, poet, and screenwriter. Raised in the suburbs of Los Angeles, he now makes his home amongst the salt breezes and open spaces of California’s Central Coast, where he somehow finds the time to write between soaking up the rays and eating his weight in homegrown avocados. A lifelong battle with muscular dystrophy has informed the majority of his work, which is written with the aid of voice recognition and eye gaze technology out of physical necessity.

His prose collection, Handicapsules: Short Stories of Speculative Crip Lit, has been taught at UMass Amherst. His Young Adult novel, All the Idle Weeds That Grow, has been lauded by disability advocates as “rollicking, subversive, hilarious, and brilliant.” His forthcoming poetry chapbook, To Be, Conjugated, has been praised by DeafBlind poet John Lee Clark as “wicked” and “sharp as a razor’s edge.” His 30-minute TV comedy pilot, Crips, is a Screencraft and WeScreenplay winner, a bronze medalist at the Titan Awards, winner of the Yes, And… Laughter Lab competitive incubator, and the #2 Overall project at Coverfly. His Western feature, Museum Piece, a Shore Scripts finalist, has been recognized by both the PAGE Awards and the Austin Film Festival.

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RespectAbility Entertainment Professionals Lab, Summer 2023

Brittany Franklin

Brittany Franklin is a socially driven director, photographer, and producer based in New York, with a diverse arts background in theatre and film. She is a graduate of LaGuardia H.S. of Performing Arts, and holds a certificate in Filmmaking from New York Film Academy, from which her graduating thesis “Finding God” debuted in the 2017 Cannes Short Film Corner. Brittany experienced hearing loss as a vocal major in High School, and has since used filmmaking and storytelling to advocate for social equity for disabled women in film. Through her work she aims to create powerful experiences that preserve culture, and honor the people that define it.

In 2019, she founded a collective for BIPOC/People with Disabilities in film that launched globally as Minorities in Film (MiFILM). With MiFILM’s innovative inclusion and cultural strategy that centers community, Brittany has helped develop pipeline programs to address the homogenous nature of production sets. Her work has garnered partnerships from 72&Sunny, Prettybird, The Gotham, Even/Odd, AICP, Final Draft, leading tech brands, and Alma Harel’s Free the Work.

Brittany is a recipient of the Sundance Uprising Grant and The Barbara and Carl Zydney Grant for Artists with Disabilities. She is also a RespectAbility x WarnerMedia Access Early Career Fellow, and a Shondaland x SeriesFest Women Directors semi-finalist. Her virtual photo gallery “Still Standing,” which displays captivating portraits of NYC’s resilient artisans, is currently on exhibition as part of her 2021 Stonehenge Artist in Residence.

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RespectAbility Entertainment Professionals Lab, Summer 2023

Cheryl Meyer

Meet Cheryl Meyer, a WGC screenwriter with an impressive resume. She has written for TV series on platforms such as Amazon Freevee, CBBC, CBC, and Disney, and has several hour-long series in development, including one funded by the Canadian Media Fund.

Cheryl’s passion for storytelling extends beyond television. Her first thriller feature, The Last Mark, was selected as a Toronto International Film Festival 2021 Industry Select and as an Official Selection in the Canadian Film Festival 2022. She is currently in post-production for her second thriller, Civil, starring Devon Sawa, Jasmine Mathews, Steven Ogg, and Douglas Smith. Civil has received prestigious support from Telefilm, the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation, Ontario Creates, and Netflix’s Banff Diversity of Voices Initiative. Her third feature script, Invalid, was selected for the Wscripted Second Cannes Screenplay List presented by Mubi. Presently, Cheryl is adapting an award-winning short horror film into a feature-length project.

As an advocate for positive change within the industry, Cheryl served as a community advisor at the inaugural Accessibility Writers Lab. Her TV pilot, Chronic Elle, which is based on her experience with chronic illness, was a semi-finalist in the Stowe Story Lab’s Maven Fellowship. Whether in writers’ rooms or in collaboration with film studios, she consistently works to ensure representation in her projects.

Outside of writing, Cheryl enjoys spending time with her two adorable dogs, playing her Nintendo Switch, and exploring the breathtaking Laurentian mountains.

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RespectAbility Entertainment Professionals Lab, Summer 2023

Dani Craig

Dani Craig hails from Pittsburgh, PA and received her B.A. in Communication from Cornell University. She is a writer and producer of Black female-led dramas and comedies for TV and film. She took a leap of faith and decided to leave her career as a Business Banker to start the Master of Entertainment Industry Management program at Carnegie Mellon University. That decision led her to pack up and move cross-country to Los Angeles. During the pandemic, she dove into her creativity, starting to write and paint. Taking full advantage of industry resources, she wrote her first script, a comedy pilot. Most importantly, she created The Black Writers Collective and has co-written a 10-episode genre-hopping Afro-futurist TV series, Stone Fate. Never one to shy away from adventure and travel, she has explored over 33 states, 29 countries, 5 continents counting, many solo. She currently resides in Los Angeles with her two 20-something children.

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RespectAbility Entertainment Professionals Lab, Summer 2023

Francine Daniels

A cultural stew of “da” Boogie Down South Bronx and Panamanian roots, Francine Daniels is a Black, queer, disabled writer and actor in no particular identity order. She revels in writing comedies and dramedies about unconventional, uncensored, and morally flawed women, who don’t look and live like stereotypes.

Her most recent TV series, In God We Gay, was selected by the world-renowned Hedgebrook writer’s program and she will be a “Writer in Residence” in Spring 2023. The pilot has also received awards from The Writers Lab, (lab fellow), Mara Brock Akil’s Writers Colony (writer residency), Daisy Pettles Writers Competition for Women (first place finalist), the Storyteller Foundation (full scholarship for the Year of the Novel Program), Black Boy Writes/Black Girl Writes Mentorship Initiative (second round placement), and Lena Waithe’s Hillman Grad Mentorship Lab (top 25 out of 1,500+ scripts).

Francine’s other two TV series Mosaic Blues and Skin-Kin have also won awards from the Athena Film Festival at Barnard College Virtual Writers Lab (lab fellow), co-hosted by the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting, and sponsored by LIFETIME, The Disruptors Fellowship (lab fellow), and Stowe Story Labs (lab and writers retreat) among others. Additionally, her comedy short Virgin Honeymoon was a top eight finalist for Kevin Hart’s Women Write Now Fellowship.

In 2023 she was selected by award-winning producer and writer Patricia Resnick for the Unlock Her Potential mentorship program. She’s also been awarded an Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB) Improv Diversity Scholarship (acting), Film Independent: Project Involve Fellowship, and chosen as a Women in Film Mentorship Program recipient.

She earned a J.D., University of San Francisco School of Law; M.A., Black Studies, and M.A., Women’s Studies both from The Ohio State University, and B.A., Liberal Arts, West Virginia University.

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RespectAbility Entertainment Professionals Lab, Summer 2023

Isaiah Cane

Isaiah Cane really just loves a good story. That’s why as a WGA member, and RespectAbility Virtual Lab Fellow, he doesn’t think there’s such a thing as a life experience that can’t help produce a compelling narrative. From his experience in Congress, crime reporting, and Special Education, to his OCD and Autism diagnoses, he’s often looking for new ways to sympathize with others and develop a new narrative lens applicable to both reality and fiction.

He adores character-driven stories and considers no idea to be too nuanced or off-the-wall to not deserve a chance. He looks forward to helping showrunners fulfill their vision for impactful and intelligent shows across all genres, as he also pursues ongoing TV development opportunities.

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RespectAbility Entertainment Professionals Lab, Summer 2023

Jackson Tucker-Meyer

Jackson Tucker-Meyer (he/they) is a fabulously autistic writer, theatre artist, and filmmaker who makes work that is weird for weirdness’ sake, crafting entertainment that reflects the real world while imagining a more extraordinary world, expanding audiences’ worldviews by making art that is larger than life.

Jackson’s film Satan Cured My Autism won Best Mockumentary at the Museum of the Moving Image’s inaugural Marvels of Media Awards. Jackson’s play Banana Guy And Banana Girl With Banana Dreamz In A Krazy World was part of Roundabout Theatre Company’s inaugural Reverb Theatre Arts Festival. Jackson’s play The Perfection Of The Donut was a semi-finalist for the Bay Area Playwrights Festival. Jackson has been an artist-in-residence with the Modern Accord Depot’s MADarts program.

Jackson’s animated series pilot, Freaky Weirdness, was a quarterfinalist for the ScreenCraft Screenwriting Fellowship, the WeScreenplay Diverse Voices Lab, and the Filmmatic Inroads Fellowship. Jackson is currently developing Freaky Weirdness into a webcomic (stay tuned for updates!).

As an arts administrator, Jackson is Director of Programs for Actionplay, a neuroinclusive theatre nonprofit. As a lyricist, Jackson is a member of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop. As a performer, Jackson has participated in new works by Stew (THE BLACKER THE BÄRRY), Dan Hurlin (HARMLESS), Bluelaces (SCRIBBLE), and Rat Queen Theatre Company (JUDY DOOMED US ALL).

MFA Theatre, Sarah Lawrence College, 2019. Visit www.jacksontuckermeyer.com and follow @jacksontuckermeyer on Instagram to learn more about Jackson’s work!

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