Abigail Bruley is a writer, performer and director with a penchant for exploring the hefty things with a light touch, with a grin, with an elbow nudge. Her affinity for the human psyche, the world of the metaphysical, the surreal life of the cognitively disabled, and the dark humor of it all informs her style at every turn.
She credits her innate sense of humor with finding the funny in the harrowing experience of building a new life from scratch after acquiring a Traumatic Brain Injury in 2013 (an incredible experience detailed on the Repeller website).
The idea for a dark-comedy Limited Series, Main Remains, came to her after she had come back online from a coma (an unbelievable, yet true story). The brush with death igniting a drive to live in the world of the series, she wrote, directed and performed in two supporting short films, Main Blessings(starring indie-rock legend Ted Leo) and 2019’s Main Absolves, winner of Best Dark Comedy in the 2023 LA Film Awards.
During this time she also created a comedic narrative web series, The Rub, and began exploring auto-biographical work by making the short film, On the Dot, about a funny and relatable brain-injured patient, a project she fleshed out during her time as a fellow in the 2023 Respectability Entertainment Lab Fellowship.
She got her chops writing and performing comedy at the Upright Citizen’s Brigade and The People’s Improv theater under teachers like Michael Showalter and James Murray, and creating the cult web series Down the Show, a sketch comedy series that attracted special guests like Janeane Garofalo, Kevin McDonald and Eddie Pepitone and earning Bruley a Writer’s Guild Nomination for best writing in a New Media series.
Her illustrations have appeared in publications all over the world and her paintings and 3-D art have exhibited in galleries across the nation.
She’s Ivy League-trained in the life of the mind, having received certification to teach Mindfulness from both University of Penn and Brown University, and holding her own course, the Begin Again class, for a population that has been through great challenges and is ready to start life over again.