LVA Dance - West Side Story

Brandi Nicole, class of  2000 (Theatre), is a writer/performer whose work centers on multidimensional, underestimated women. The daughter of a juvenile detention officer mom and 2nd strike convicted felon dad led Brandi to write characters that explore duality.  While she started as an actor, she fell in love with the storytelling process after writing & producing MUTED, a short film about media discrepancy when a child of color goes missing, that was acquired by HBO, selected for the Ryan Murphy Half Initiative Program, and garnered over 175k views on YouTube via Issa Rae’s #ShortFilmSundays. Brandi followed that up by making ALOHA, a short film about one mother’s quest to honor a difficult birth experience, which was awarded the Emergence Filmmaker Grant. She has since written or produced a handful of drama and dramedy shorts as an indie filmmaker under her Rainy Day Bliss production banner.

On the TV side, Brandi got her start as an HBO Writers Fellow where she learned the importance of honing her voice by bringing her full self to her work. She did just that as a staff writer and recurring character on season two of YOUR HONOR, a legal drama from Showtime that amassed over one billion views once it moved to Netflix. From there, she went on to write for the first season of the Bosch spin-off BALLARD, a serialized police procedural set to premiere on Amazon in summer of 2025.  Next year will also launch the long-awaited HAPPY FACE, the Paramount+ true-crime series that gave Brandi her first episodic writing credit.

Originally from California, Brandi is currently based in Memphis, TN, where she’s raising her three kids. She’s developing a handful of her own projects in both theatre and TV, works with the creative community as a workshop instructor, and serves as a programmer and judge for a handful of film festivals and screenplay competitions. In her free time, you can find her advocating for progressive policies and decompressing via her first love: musical theatre.