Originally from Anchorage, Alaska, John Heginbotham graduated from The Juilliard School (1993) and was a member of Mark Morris Dance Group (1998-2012). In 2011, he founded Dance Heginbotham (DH), which has been presented and commissioned by Baryshnikov Arts Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, The Joyce Theater, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others. Company highlights include representing the United States In 2016 on a 6-week tour to Southeast Asia with DanceMotion USASM, a cultural diplomacy initiative of the U.S. Department of State, produced by BAM, as well as numerous collaborations with visionary artists, including Joshua Bell, Maira Kalman, Alarm Will Sound, and Brooklyn Rider, among many others.
Active as a freelance choreographer, John’s current projects include John Adams’ Girls of the Golden West, directed by Peter Sellars (premiere at San Francisco Opera in 2017, touring internationally in 2019); Candide (premiere with Orlando Philharmonic in 2016, touring with The Knights chamber orchestra in 2018/19); and Oklahoma!, directed by Daniel Fish (premiere at Bard Summerscape in 2015, performances at St. Ann’s Warehouse in 2018, opening on Broadway in April 2019).
John is the recipient of the 2014 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award and a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship.
www.danceheginbotham.org
Susan Kim has worked as headwriter, story editor, and writer on over 50 children’s series – live action and animation, across all platforms, and both nationally and internationally. Recently, she was story editor on HELLO, NINJA for Netlix. Prior to that, she was headwriter on Nickelodeon’s WELCOME TO THE WAYNE, which received Emmy nominations for Best Animated Series in 2018 and Best Writing in a Children’s Series in 2017. Other credits include STARBEAM, CLIFFORD THE BIG RED DOG, ARTHUR, RUSTY RIVETS, CYBERCHASE, ASTROBLAST, PEG + CAT, JUNGLE JUNCTION, THE OCTONAUTS, WONDER PETS!, SPEED RACER, HANDY MANNY, POCOYO, NI-HAO KAI-LAN, OSWALD THE OCTOPUS, DRAGON TALES, COURAGE THE COWARDLY DOG, READING RAINBOW, THE MYSTERY FILES OF SHELBY WOO, ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE DARK?, and others. She has received six Emmy nominations and four Writers Guild Award nominations for her work.
With her husband, Laurence Klavan, Susan has written two critically acclaimed graphic novels: City of Spies (First Second Books 2009) and Brain Camp (First Second Books. 2010). She and Laurence also wrote the young adult trilogy, Wasteland (Harper Collins 2013-2016.)
Susan also facilitates and helped design the Sesame Street Writers’ Room, a writing fellowship designed to develop fresh writing talent from underrepresented racial backgrounds. The program is entering its third year and has launched 15 emerging writers into careers as children’s TV writers.
CHRISTINE BRUNO (AEA / SAG-AFTRA) is an award-winning New York-based actor, teaching artist, and disability equity consultant for the entertainment industry and has worked across the U.S. and internationally. Selected credits include the Off-Broadway world premieres of Mariana Correño King’s Truckers and Bekah Brunstetter’s Public Servant; Jose Rivera’s world premiere adaptation of Genet’s The Maids; Raspberry (U.K. musical tour); Law & Order; God Friended Me; 2021 festival favorite Best Summer Ever on Hulu®. Christine serves on the SAG- AFTRA National and NY Local boards and is Chair of the National and NY Local SAG- AFTRA Performers with Disabilities Committees. She is a member of The Actors Studio, The Actors Center, and a teaching artist for NYU Tisch and Queens Theatre’s Theatre for All training program. MFA, Acting & Directing, The New School.
Lauren Appelbaum is the Vice President, Communications, at RespectAbility, a nonprofit organization fighting stigmas and advancing opportunities for and with people with disabilities. Drawing upon her background in broadcast journalism and as an individual with an acquired invisible disability – Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy – she oversees RespectAbility’s outreach to Hollywood to promote accurate, diverse and inclusive media portrayals on TV and in film. Working with more than 40 partners, she educates studio and network executives on the why and how to be more inclusive – both in front of and behind the camera. She is the author of The Hollywood Disability Inclusion Toolkit, which was created to help entertainment professionals to be as inclusive of people with disabilities as possible.
Will Halby is a founder and director of Zeno Mountain Farm. Since inception, ZMF has produced 14 original films that star and are made by an integrated group of people with and without disabilities. Most recently, ZMF was the subject of the documentary Becoming Bulletproof. Current projects include The Homecoming- an original feature musical.
Andrew Pilkington is a film producer living in Manhattan. He has worked for award winning directors such as Alex Gibney and Morgan Spurlock. He wrote and produced three feature-length films. He is currently producing a feature musical staring actors with disabilities.
Originally from Moultrie, Georgia, Brad Bailey received his B.A. in Political Science from Yale and his Masters in Public Affairs from Princeton. In 2018, he recently graduated from the University of California, Berkeley School of Journalism and “Hale” is his documentary thesis from the program. He is currently a graduate student in Oral History at Columbia University.
A friend and supporter of ReelAbilities since before we began, Lawrence Carter-Long’s lifetime of advocacy combines a unique blend of the arts, public policy, and popular culture. An internationally respected authority on the history and evolution of disability in media, Lawrence has provided feedback, guidance, curated, or consulted on projects for SAG-AFTRA, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Sundance Institute, the American Film Institute, the Academy Museum, the Television Academy, Tribeca Festival, NPR, ITVS, the BBC, along with other notable names and initials that Non-Disclosure Agreements don’t allow us to mention.
In 2012, again in 2021, and most recently every Sunday night during July 2023, Lawrence Carter-Long curated and cohosted “The Projected Image: A History of Disability in Film” on Turner Classic Movies reaching approximately 90 million people. His hashtag promoting disability awareness, DISABLED. #SayTheWord went viral in 2016 and continues to be used today. He has written for academic journals like Film Quarterly, had pieces commissioned by PBS and The Atlantic, and been published in major mainstream publications like USA Today. A popular public speaker and panelist, Lawrence has lectured on disability and media at the Library of Congress, the Whitney Museum of Modern Art, and the United Nations, among others.
In addition, Lawrence’s insights are featured in the award-winning 2020 feature length documentary, “Code of the Freaks,” a radical reframing of disabled characters in film. As an actor, he appears in the 2021 NY Times Critic’s Pick, “Best Summer Ever” as Officer Gorinsky. Previously the communications lead for the National Council on Disability – the independent federal agency that drafted the Americans with Disabilities Act during the Obama administration—he became Codirector of DisArt based in Grand Rapids, MI in January 2023. He resides in Oakland, CA.
