April E. Brassard is an award-winning playwright, screenwriter, TV writer, musician, artist, producer, performer and professor, who has lived and worked in Hollywood, New York, and DC. She is a faculty member in the Department of Performing Arts at Georgetown University for a year, where she has been awarded the Faculty Career Champions Award, and was the Director of ORLANDO, a critically-acclaimed production of Sarah Ruhl’s play at the Gonda Theater this past fall.
The only child of scientists, she was predestined for a career in medicine, until an esteemed pre-med program went awry and chronic illness decimated her life, catalyzing her to pivot paths. After becoming a background actor on the hit WB television series Dawson’s Creek, she fell in love with the performing arts. April earned her MFA at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, then moved to Hollywood to work with Team Downey (Robert Downey, Jr.), Warner Bros. Studios, CBS Studios, Disney-ABC Studios, and CBS Studios, where she wrote and produced episodes of primetime television. She then delved into development, writing four original series with Archie Comics, Two Shakes Entertainment (Damon Wayans, Jr.), Lucid Road (Aaron Paul), and Tornante (Michael Eisner). She then wrote and produced I Was a Stranger, a six-time internationally award-winning short film with stars from Marvel and Netflix. She has also written and produced ten plays, including two “five-star,” “must-see,” sold-out productions at the Capital Fringe Festival, one of which she played the starring role.
April moved from LA to DC after her father had a heart transplant at the start of the pandemic, becoming a professor at the School of Theater at George Mason University for five years, in addition to serving as Director of their new works festival for four years. April won the Robert K. Purks Faculty Enrichment Grant from the College of Visual and Performing Arts, which she utilized in theatrical production, before transitioning to her role at Georgetown. April strives to speak for the silenced through her art, and hopes to educate and enrich the lives of the next generation.
ORLANDO Reviews:
‘Orlando’ takes a gender trip through time at Georgetown University