The Yellow Sponge is the Dish Sponge is a labor of love. About love. And how the mundane chore of cleaning can reveal something deeper. Bixby Elliot, the writer, co-producer and actor of this narrative short is a queer writer for theater, film, and television. His work often examines the past through a queer lens, flipping history to reveal truth. While Michele Noble, the Emmy® nominated director and producer's work often centers around social justice. In many ways, The Yellow Sponge is the Dish Sponge flips the script and shines a light. Since its debut in June (2024)T he Yellow Sponge is the Dish Sponge has been selected at 14 film festivals and won 8 jury awards for best narrative film, best LGBTQ+ short film, outstanding comedic director, best comedic performance, and two audience awards for best film. 

About the Project

Michele Noble is a writer, director and producer of award-winning narrative features and documentaries who combines the eye of a documentarian with the heart of a social justice activist and the lyricism of a storyteller. In 2021, Michele received an Emmy® Award nomination for her powerful documentary, Reclamation: The Rise at Standing Rock (2020) which was selected at over 40 film festivals worldwide garnering 21 Jury awards. During the filming at Standing Rock, Michele joined on the frontlines as an ally in solidarity with the Native Nations peaceful resistance against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL).  Her work often centers around social justice as she tells stories of people who are typically on the edges of the frame aiming to bring those stories to the center.  Her feature length documentary, Journey 4 Artists (2014), which contemplates music’s power to heal histories of genocide, won the Grand Prize at the Oscar-qualifying Rhode Island International Film Festival. Her narrative work as a director includes Runaway Dreams, a feature film which won honors at the Deauville Film Festival; the Revolution, a fifty minute experimental film about activists in the 1960s; and Ain’t It Though, (2025) a feature film currently in post-production. Michele writes and directs for film and TV and is drawn to political dramas, thrillers, dark comedy and modern-day westerns. She is a graduate of University of Southern California film school, is a member of the New York Women in Film and Television (NYWIFT) serves on the advisory boards of the Rhode Island International Film Festival, and the Social Justice Institute in Seattle. She is a member of the Directors Guild of America, the Writers Guild of America and the Television Academy.

 

Bixby Elliot is a queer writer (for tv, film and theater) from New York City and a member of the 2024/2025 Class of NBC/Universal’s TV Writing Program. He is currently a writer on the upcoming NBC/ Universal TV series, The Five Star Weekend based on Elin Hilderbrand's novel starring Jennifer Garner.  As an award-winning playwright, Bixby’s plays have been produced in New York, London, Chicago, Seattle, Atlanta, Edinburgh and more. His play I LOVE YOU ST. PETERSBURG! won the Samuel French OOB Festival and was published in 2020. He is the winner of the 2019 Carlos Anoni Italian Award for Best Comedic Play in English and was a finalist for the prestigious Eugene O’Neill Conference. TimeOut Chicago selected Bixby’s play ABRAHAM LINCOLN WAS A FAGGOT as one of the “Top 10 Plays ” and it was Jeff Award Nominated. The New Yorker Magazine wrote that Bixby’s play SOMMERFUGL, directed by Stephen Brackett (Tony Nominated director of STRANGE LOOP and Broadway’s BE MORE CHILL) and starring Wayne Wilcox (GILMORE GIRLS), “conjured the spirit of Christopher Isherwood, both in its vivid evocation of Europe between the wars and in its characters’ bittersweet yearning for the fullness of life.” His play BLUEPRINT was produced by Tony Award winning producer Arielle Tepper Madover and starred Emmy winner Peter Strauss. GIRL YOU KNOW IT’S TRUE (inspired by the rise and fall of the pop/rock duo Milli Vanilli) was a semi-finalist for the O’Neill Conference,  semi-finalist for the Princess Grace Award and was produced in Chicago and Seattle. Bixby’s short film AQUAMARINE has been in over 20 festivals and won multiple awards including; Best Short, Best, Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor and Actress and more. Bixby’s screenplay HAPPY, NOW was a finalist for the Sundance Writers Lab and a finalist a Mammoth Lakes Film Festival. He shot his first feature length film, AIN’T IT THOUGH in May of 2022 (currently in post-production). AIN’T IT THOUGH recently won the Best Feature Screenplay Award at the New Renaissance Festival in Amsterdam. “You’ve Got Types” Bixby’s short film script was selected as “Best Voice” for the Script Summit Screenplay Competition in 2021.

Bixby has developed projects for television; HIGH FASHION previously in development with Jennifer Lopez Entertainment and THE GRID previously in developmental talks at PBS. He is currently working on several original pilots; Weeki Wachee, Dreams Come True, After These Messages, Love Mary Todd, Guncles (with Daniel Marshall), Tilting (with Bernardo Cubria), Audacity (with Erin Mallon) and several projects with Melanie Maras (Next Door, Cancelled and The Breakup Tour).

Bixby is a graduate of the MFA playwriting program at Columbia University and co-curator of The Brooklyn Generator (a new play generation project) and founder of TH/TW Project. Bixby is developing new works for theater, film and television.  

About the Team

Do we really need to wash sheets every week? Why would you ever have to clean a shower head? What is the difference between the blue sponge and the yellow sponge? These are the questions that haunt Jason. He doesn't understand the world's obsession (and his husband Erik's obsession) with cleanliness. So, on the day of their big party Jason launches his campaign to open Erik's eyes to this problem. What starts as disagreements about Lysol Wipes and Febreze scented trash bags turns into something bigger as The Yellow Sponge is the Dish Sponge looks at a couples conflict as old as time...fighting about household chores.

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