After her own therapist goes on maternity leave, Alice, a young therapist, struggles to overcome her anxiety. With help from her anger-prone replacement counselor and her childhood best friend, she must prove to herself that she can be a great therapist or else admit that she's not cut out for this.

Artist’s statement

More people are in therapy now than ever. We care about mental health, finally! Yay! But who is talking about the wellbeing of mental health providers? Who supports them? For mental health therapists, stress and burnout are serious issues largely untouched. I’m excited to explore this through Totally Normal, my eight-episode web series.

When I started out as a therapist, I was hopeful to change people’s lives. That optimism shrank as I joined a mental health agency and was required to work long hours (8 clients a day) to meet insurance requirements. There was not enough support, considering I was working with people who had been through severe trauma. My fellow therapists and I were coping with secondary trauma resulting in heavy alcohol use, medical leaves, and anxiety attacks. How could we support people at their most-vulnerable, when we were barely functioning?

I absolutely adore seeing therapists showing up more in television, like in Shrinking and iconicly in The Sopranos, but I’m so excited to see a therapist protagonist in a comedic setting and the depth this brings to characters. This show is designed to be episodic, in order to show the character’s empowerment journey over time in bite size pieces the audience can enjoy.

Totally Normal seeks to bring awareness to the problems with how our healthcare system is set up, and explores how to actually ethically provide therapy to support people, as well as providers. I’m a therapist who went through this, and I’m here to tell the story accurately, through comedy, because people’s hearts open the most through laughter.

Totally Normal will make you laugh out loud as Alice tries to overcome anxiety and find herself along the way.

TOTALLY NORMAL: THE WEB SERIES

the trailer

Director: Nevada Lacy, Assistant Director: Katie Knackstedt, Line Producer: Dana Murphy, Director of Photography/Editor: TallPawl, Field Sound/Sound Designer: Troy Micheau, Lighting Designer: Armando Navarro, Executive Producers: Emma Bridges and Adam Filipowicz, Art Director: Audra White, Wardrobe: Ashley Thurow, Makeup Designer: Lydia Flemming, Camera Assistant: Adam Filipowicz, Art/Lighting Assistant: Kat Wright, Script Supervisor: Crystal Lemons, Script Consultant: Maggie Cibik, BTS Photographer: Silvia Guevara, Production Assistants: Maggie Cibik, Corey Harper, Gavin Knox, Shayla Perez, Ajé Summerly, Co-Producer: Tara Johnson-Medinger

In the writer’s room, we wrote eight gorgeous and hysterical episodes, all about ten minutes each. We shot a test pilot and our goal is to film all of season one by Summer 2024.

We can’t do this project without the funds! If you want to support Totally Normal: The Web Series, donate above! 100% of your donation goes to producing costs of the film. Just label your payment “Totally Normal Donation”!

Keep an eye out here for updates on the fundraising campaign. Thank you for checking us out!

FUNDRAISING

Donate via Venmo

Meet the team

Creator - Actor - Writer - Producer
Emma Bridges has a B.S. in acting from Skidmore College and is known for her roles on Shrill (Hulu) and Trinkets (Netflix). She has performed with various professional theaters including Portland Playhouse, Oregon Children’s Theater, and The Milagro. Emma has trained with The Atlantic Acting School, Portland Playhouse, and the Gaiety School of Acting. Emma has trained in improv with Kickstand Comedy and Deep End Theater and performs stand up comedy. Emma is also a mental health therapist. Emma is passionate about creating work that makes you laugh so hard you pee a little, addresses mental health, and reminds the viewer “you are enough.” In 2021 she studied writing for dramedy with Charity Miller and her script made it to the 2nd round of the Launchpad Pilot Competition. She created Totally Normal with her writing/life partner Adam Filipowicz and she had a blast filming and acting in the pilot last summer.
Co-Creator - Writer
Adam Filipowicz grew up in Virginia Beach, VA and studied at The University of Chicago, where he graduated with a BA in Biological Sciences in 2014. His interests are broad, so in addition to biology courses Adam took courses ranging from The History of Japanese Philosophy to a creative writing course focused on Wizards. In 2017, he moved to Portland, OR to begin a PhD in Neuroscience at Oregon Health & Science University. While finishing up his graduate studies, Adam tapped into his latent creative side and used his writing experience to co-create Totally Normal: The Web Series with Emma Bridges. The two wrote and produced the pilot for the series.
Writer’s Room Executive Producer
Berlyn Lee (Producer) is the writer's room producer & one of the writers for Totally Normal. She is originally from Washington State, she studied in California at Columbia College Hollywood where she graduated with a BA in Scriptwriting for Cinema as the Valedictorian. In 2017 her feature script "Third Wheel" placed third in the comedy division at the International PAGE awards! More recently, in 2021, "Third Wheel" made it to the second round at the Austin Film Festival. She has also participated in the sketch comedy group "Hot Sandwich" in Seattle, WA and performs stand up regularly with "That's what she said," a queer comedy troupe, in Portland, OR. In addition, she continues to write for television and film with her writing partner and other collaborators as well as working on her own projects.
Writer
At the age of 7, after completing the first two chapters of what was to be a best selling novel had she ever bothered to finish it, Isis decided she wanted to be a writer. Eighteen years, many terrible scripts, and one massively unhealthy obsession with Saturday Night Live later, here she is. So far, she's written about Arthurian curses, dancing robots and potentially sentient goldfish. She also fronts musical comedy project A Very Serious Band and one day WILL finish the feature film she’s been “working on” (procrastinating from) for the last year.
Writer
Monica Spill is a screenwriter based in the U.K with a Masters with Distinction from Royal Holloway, University of London. She endeavours to bring heart and humour to all the projects she works on.
Writer
Writer
Writer - Sean Kirkpatrick is a writer/actor/director based out of Portland, Oregon. Sean‘s plays have been produced by the Seven Devils Playwrights Conference, Montana Repertory Theatre, and Downtown Dance Collective, and have won several awards at the Zootown Fringe Festival including the prestigious “Top Shelf” award. Additional works include The Covid Trilogy, a series of action comedies written during the pandemic satirizing outlandish Covid conspiracies, and A Very Top Gun Christmas, a musical parody of the Top Gun franchise.
Sean can also be found at home splitting a pint of vanilla ice cream with their cat, Harris Littels.