Manic Pixie Dream Girl Syndrome
A woman’s reality takes a captivating twist when yet another first date turns basic.
TRAILER
Brady Wolchansky is a multidisciplinary artist and emerging filmmaker born, raised, and currently based in Dallas, Texas. Her artistic endeavors span stand-up comedy, improvisation, acting, screenwriting, directing, performance art and experimental video processes.
Wolchansky graduated with a B.F.A. in Integrated Studio Arts from Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 2013. She is currently pursuing her M.F.A. in Visual Studies at Pacific Northwest College of Art at Willamette University in Portland, Oregon, with an anticipated graduation date of September 2024. Her portfolio consists of both improvised and scripted one-woman performances that conceptually merge expected comedy tropes with feminist undertones and are often aesthetically incorporated into nontraditional videomaking.
In 2024 Wolchansky completed her first narrative short, Manic Pixie Dream Girl Syndrome, a film she wrote, acted in, and co-directed alongside recent SMU Film & Media Arts B.F.A. graduate, Grace Maddox (co-director).
I am interested in exploring the virtual world of human interaction, especially within the confines of dating apps and similar, romantic, digital correspondence. My work plays with the idea of how one can remove oneself from any genuine interactions with people by creating these, sometimes, false perceptions of who we are through our online personas.
I conceptually achieve this by merging my own personal experiences in all types of relationships, specifically as it pertains to a heavily heteronormative society. I aesthetically achieve this by combining aspects of my stand-up comedy, improv, performance and experimental video processes.
A continuing theme found in my work seems to be the subject of “empathy.” I imagine it’s because empathy hasn’t always been something that has been easy for me. Especially growing up, I was in my own world and had a difficult time telling the difference between someone who was joking and someone who was being serious. So, my family would often tell me elaborate exaggerated lies that were obviously unbelievable to everyone around me, but I would absorb these interactions as truth.
I also suffer from face-blindness, so I’ll often remember people based off of something simple like their hair style or everyday fashion accessories. Sometimes when I haven’t seen someone in a long time, they recognize me right away, but I don’t recognize them because they’ve changed their hair color or made some other subtle change.
I imagine this is the reason why I have gravitated towards acting. An actor is required to take on the persona of someone else, who often has nothing in common with them personally. In this way, I am constantly forcing myself to try and see things from another’s perspective.
I aim to push my viewers to question what is and what is not funny and challenge the expectations people have when watching something they initially expect to be funny. There is no wrong reaction.
-Brady Wolchansky