Introducing: Our two new web series, guaranteed to make you think and laugh
As HelloGiggles continues to grow, we’re expanding our reader-writer contributor model to include web-series auteurs, lending our platform to support up and coming filmmakers as they create new worlds for us to get lost in. Providing a platform for you to shine is why HelloGiggles was founded in the first place! Here are a few auteurs we are excited to introduce you to.
Starting us off is Lisha Brooks and Dan Robert, co-creators of Beards, a web series about fictional couples where one person is using the other as a “beard” to conceal their true identity. Best friends, Brooks and Robert have been co-creating characters and their corresponding worlds since they first met freshman year of high school. “At our alternative performing arts high school, we would often perform characters at open mics and at events like our annual Halloween celebration Oktoberfest, where we actually first dressed up as and inhibited the characters Trixie and Jethro and what would become Hugh and Vivian,” says Robert, referencing characters from their series Beards. Brooks and Robert developed a system of improvising and recording dialog, which they would later transcribe and craft into scripts.
Although each episode has the common theme of people hiding from who they really are, being closeted impacts each couple in a different way, revealing the complexity of the issue and the depth of the characters experiencing it. This comes as no surprise since Brooks “loves writing fully realized women,” to which Robert adds, “I’ve always said that I would be elated to only ever write for, with, and about women. I think the women we’ve created here are challenging, strange, funny and bold, and I’d want to have a drink or go on a hike with all of them.”
Brooks continues, “Love and romantic relationships are very strange, because for lots of people, that’s their whole universe. So it’s crazy when that universe is built on lie. It’s both devastating and hysterical, and that’s the kind of world we like to create for our characters.” Robert agrees, adding, “You want people to laugh. If you get them laughing, you have them in the palm of your hand. It’s fun to take their focus and ask them to drop in with the character and see them in a moment of pain or making a tough decision.Those are the moments we love and relate to. And if we are able to have a moment, to take a second after laughter to feel for the character, that’s a take away I’m very excited to have happen.”
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