Video: Broadway Vet Brooke Tansley Starts SNAP 'Buddy System' Amidst Government Shutdown

A Broadway veteran is making headlines for using social media to connect families losing SNAP benefits due to the government shutdown with a "buddy" who can help them out.

News Channel 5 reports that Brooke Tansley, who has appeared on Broadway in Beauty and the Beast and Hairspray, started the buddy system with a Facebook post in her neighborhood group for East Nashville.

"If your SNAP is going to run out November first, and you need help with groceries, comment below," she wrote. Those who could help out the commenters in need would reply and thus the buddy system was born.

"Within the next couple hours, 30 families were getting fed," Tansley said. "I was just crying because, like, it was just an idea I had in a second, and then I posted it one second later, wondering if anybody would do it."

Tansley is also encouraging people in other communities to start their own SNAP buddy systems amidst the ongoing shutdown, to help other families in need across the country. 

Check out the full report in the video above and read more here.

About Brooke Tansley

Brooke has been a founder, co-founder, or early employee of six arts & entertainment startups. Highlights from her 30+ years in entertainment include starring on Broadway as Belle in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and as Penny Pingleton in Hairspray. She spent three years on the roster of Amy Poehler’s Upright Citizens Brigade and played a serial killer on Law & Order: Criminal Intent. Films include Music and Lyrics (with Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore), My Sassy Girl (with Elisha Cuthbert and Jesse Bradford), Who’s the Top? (with Steve Buscemi), Take Care, and Moving Mike.

Brooke made her Los Angeles stage debut as Anne Frank in the West Coast Premiere of Michael John LaChiusa’s Little Fish (with Alice Ripley and Gregory Jbara) and can be heard on the Original Los Angeles Cast Recording (Ghostlight Records). She followed that with the Los Angeles Regional Premiere of her favorite piece, The Light in the Piazza, as Clara Johnson, a performance and production much loved by both audiences and critics, with Brooke receiving a Best Performance by a Leading Actress acknowledgment from Stage Scene LA.

She has performed at The 2011 Chicago Sketch Festival, SketchFest NYC 2011, Out of Bounds Comedy Festival in Austin, TX, and San Francisco Sketchfest. During her tenure at Transcendence Theatre Company, she worked in marketing & publicity, front-of-house management, design & branding, casting, ticket sales, event planning, assistant stage management, community outreach & service, merchandise sales, and arts education. Brooke also handled publicity for Nickelodeon’s Goosebumps and Lily Tomlin’s The Magic School Bus.

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