Sidney Brammer
916-0001
sbramme2@austincc.edu

Sidney Brammer, A native Austinite, was exposed early on to the creative and political circles of Central Texas. Her father, Billie Lee Brammer, was a writer/journalist and her mother, Nadine Brammer Eckhardt, was an artist and muse to many. Early exposure to cultural activities resulted in her becoming a Fine Arts major at U.T., and eventually a performing artist in theatre, dance, film, and television. She is a screenwriter, playwright, director, and film/video and theatre artist with extensive management and grants background in the arts. She was a founding member of the award-winning regional theatre company, Big State Productions of Texas, whose signature production, In The West, toured for a decade, playing Kennedy Center in 1989 representing the best of Texas theatre. This award-winning project was later produced as a feature film, Deep In The Heart, featuring British actors Kenneth Cranham and Amanda Root. In The West also inspired the ACC regional performance literature class that results in the interdisciplinary project between Drama and Creative Writing called In 2 the West).

In the 1980s and 90s, Sidney coordinated, supervised, or managed feature films and commercials in New York and Los Angeles. She also began writing screenplays, which include Lonesome written for award-winning German director Elke Rosthal, featuring Marisa Berenson (Barry Lyndon, Cabaret) and Aleksa Palladino (Manny and Lo, The Huntress, Cherry). This script was a finalist in the 1997 Slamdance Competition, placed in the Top 30 New Century Writers Competition in 1998, and won the Richard Vague Film Production Fund grant. Lonesome premiered in 2001 at the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival and the USA Film Festival and has been broadcast in Germany. Brammer?s screenplay, One Small Step (based on the work of poet Eileen Myles) was presented in 1998 by the Nuyorican Fifth Night Reading Series in NYC (featuring Melissa Leo of Frozen River and NBC's Homicide, Aleksa Palladino [Manny and Lo, The Huntress, Cherry], and Peter Sarsgaard [Boys Don?t Cry, Garden State, Jarhead). Her play, Heavenly Somewhere, (winner, New Voices in the Theatre of The University of Texas 1985 and Top 100 scripts for New Century Writers 1997) has had two private readings in New York City featuring Ann Meara (of Stiller and Meara) and directed by Sondra Lee of the Actors Studio, as well as a staged reading for the Rocky Mountain Playwrights Festival in Telluride, Co, and a staged reading for Echo Theatre Reads in Dallas. Her screenplay, Tales of the Borderland, placed Fifth in the New Century Writers Award 1999 and was named one of the Top Thirty Scripts Worldwide by the Telluride Indiefest 2000. Tales of the Borderland was written for Brammer's film directing debut; she produced and directed an award-winning 30-minute video excerpt from it entitled Borderland (Certificate of Merit, Houston International Film Festival; Nominee/Best Comedy Short, South by Southwest 2000, showcased at AFI Talking Revolution Digital Video Conference). She has also directed two other short films (Nowhere Man and You Say) currently in festival distribution. In 2006, Brammer co-directed the premiere production of the new musical A Ride with Bob (featuring Ray Benson and Asleep at the Wheel), which is currently touring nationally. That same year she directed The Big Jukebox in the Sky, a live theatrical radio show that was later broadcast nationally on PRX affiliate public radio stations. In Fall ?08, she was selected as an Associate Artist by the Atlantic Center for the Arts to work with story/myth/folk tale expert, Gioia Timpanelli; Sidney began writing fiction while at the Atlantic, and she recently completed her first short story, which will be published by Southwest Review in 2009. Brammer is a member of Dramatist's Guild, Screen Actors Guild, Association of Film, Television, and Radio Artists, and is a dormant member of International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees. She currently sits on the Advisory Board of Austin?s Reel Women (after several years as a Board Member). She teaches screenwriting and playwrighting as an adjunct faculty member of Austin Community College?s Creative Writing Department.