Kelsey Harper – 2024 Pilot Finalist (Half-Hour)

Kelsey Harper is a Texas/Brooklyn transplant living in Los Angeles. She graduated from NYU Tisch’s Department of Dramatic Writing MFA program in 2019 with an emphasis on television and playwriting. Kelsey wrote, directed and co-produced What Can I Get Started For You with Lucky Dolly Productions which has won multiple awards including Best Podcast at Las Vegas International Film Festival, Prague international Film Festival and Hong Kong International Film Festival. The project is currently being shopped as an animated series. 

In addition to being a finalist in the BlueCat competition, Kelsey was recently accepted to The Workshop Theater fall workshop intensive. She’s currently revising her play, Tuba!, which was nominated for the Goldberg Award at NYU Tisch. Tuba! (not to be confused with “Tubas,” an audio series she co-wrote for Abominable Productions) is a passion project Kelsey wrote about her time in the tuba section at the University of Texas at Austin. Though she was a voice major, Kelsey decided her sophomore year to learn an instrument in order to join the marching band. The directors said they “always needed tubas”. She joined her junior year. Thus, a tubist and two scripts were born. 

Though she has multiple scripts dedicated to the largest brass instrument, marching band is far from the only thing Kelsey writes about. Her award winning audio series, the aforementioned “What Can I Get Started for You,” is set in a coffee shop based on her grad school survival job as a barista on the first floor of the World Trade Center. The audio series is available wherever you find your podcasts. 

Kelsey originally wrote “The Mouse” as a screenplay in grad school. The second year of her schooling, there was a mouse problem on the 7th floor of Tisch (something that would never happen to the souped-up film department on the 9th floor…). She sympathized with the plights of the mice (dirty, unwanted, hunted), and decided to write them a story in which they’re the star (shiny, beloved, hunted in a cool way). The Mouse is also a story of female friendship. Close female friendships are extremely important to Kelsey. She is a girls girl and she will write about it. In the later episodes, Leah learns to rely on, and trust her roommates. She is transformed through their friendship. This is the true heart of the story (so sorry to the mice!) 

The Mouse is currently written as a mini-series. However, Kelsey is in the process of writing it as a screenplay as well. 

In addition to writing, Kelsey is also a regular performer. Her first one woman show, Something Like… Musical (a show where Kelsey learns the music to a famous musical but doesn’t look up the plot, then performs what she thinks happens using finger puppets), won the Cultural Arts Envoy Award and the Producer’s Encore Award at the Hollywood Fringe Festival in 2023. It also had a one year residency at the Jaxx Theater in East Hollywood. Her new show, Kelsey Karaoke: a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Comedy Show premiered in New York in August to rave reviews. The show truly is choose-your-own-adventure and heavily features her multimedia and vocal prowess. Kelsey Karaoke will have its Los Angeles premiere on October 26th at Lyric Hyperion. Industry comps are available. 

Kelsey also co-hosts two variety shows. Every other month, Kelsey and her co-host invite comics on Phones Down (Lyric Hyperion) to show the most embarrassing thing on their phone. The most humiliating item wins the comic the title of “most embarrassing comedian in Los Angeles.” It’s quite the honor! When Kelsey is in NYC, she co-hosts Pigeon Presents, a musical variety show that has been featured in Time Out New York. 

In her spare time, Kelsey cross-stitches so much that it has become a concern to her friends and family.

Website: www.kelseymharper.com

Instagram: @kelsey_______h

Tiktok: @kelsey_______h //

Twitter: @harper_kelsey