Actors - M. C. Brennan

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	Actors - M. C. Brennan

Maire Caitlin Brennan is an American writer and performer born in Phoenix, Arizona on February 14, 1969. Born William Michael Pearre, Brennan first achieved local success as Mike Sortino before coming out as transgendered and beginning a much-publicized gender transition in 1987.

The leader of a Phoenix DIY performance art collective called the Loons, Brennan began directing short films in 1982 and the following year, in collaboration with cartoonist Eric Paul Johnson, Brennan founded a satirical "underground newspaper" called the Loon News, a forerunner of The Onion. The Loon News became popular among Arizona teens, and distribution expanded to several other cities including Boston, Massachusetts and Hawthorne, California. Brennan subsequently wrote for numerous local and national publications including the Phoenix Gazette, ECHO magazine and the Comic News.

Brennan directed several short films including The Mike And Eric Movie, Spam Animals and The Man Called Bear: Hero At Large. A sporadic theatre, film and television acting career soon followed, including appearances in local commercials, independent features and bit parts in national productions such as Midnight Caller, The Doors, Northern Exposure and perhaps somewhat ironically, the 1985 feature Just One Of The Guys.

An early publicly transgendered performer, Brennan's acting career was hampered during transition by a lack of positive roles for "out" transgendered actors. Chafing at unflattering stereotypes and uncomfortable with "straight" roles, Brennan largely confined her acting efforts to voiceovers, small roles in industrials and indie shorts, and appearances in friends' work throughout the 90s.

Brennan's music career began in earnest in 1986 with the release of an independent cassette, Last Gasp. A peripheral character in the Phoenix and Tempe music scene that spawned Galen Herod, Tone Set, Dead Hot Workshop and the Gin Blossoms, Brennan recorded several more independent cassettes during the 1980s, working briefly with producer Terry Garvin of the Zen Lunatics for "I Can't Help It."

For much of her career, Brennan's music was only available on cassette sold at shows, through "mail art" or cassette subculture zines, and she was often known to customize each cassette with unique performances and reworkings of her music, cover songs, commentary, sound collages and occasional pranks. Although titles and cover art are often uniform, virtually no two cassettes from the mail-order era are identical and no "master" was kept.

In the 1990s, adopting the gender-indeterminate stage name "M. C. Brennan"--the "M. C." jokingly rumored to stand for "multiple choice"--she lived and performed in San Francisco and later Seattle, making pop music in the vein of Elliot Smith, Harry Nilsson, Aimee Mann and early David Bowie, and recording the independent CDs M. C. Brennan (etc) in 1994, San Francisco Sessions (produced by former James Brown producer Susie Foot) in 1995 and Black Diamond in 1997.

Brennan resumed film work in 2000, directing Grandma Shoots, Grandma Scores, starring 99-year old basketball star (and Brennan's real-life great-grandmother) Mae Owen. In 2002, Brennan received the Arizona Commission on the Arts Screenwriting fellowship, and the following year, she won the Phoenix Film Festival's Best Screenplay award for "The People's Choice."

Discography

Musician In Progress (1985)

Last Gasp (1986)

Panorama (1989)

M. C. Brennan (etc) (1994)

San Francisco Sessions (1995)

Black Diamond (1997)

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