Leah Nanako Winkler

Leah Nanako Winkler is an award-winning playwright from Kamakura, Japan and Lexington Kentucky. Her plays include God Said This (Winner: 2018 Yale Drama Series, World Premiere: Humana Festival, Off-Broadway Premiere Primary Stages/Cherry Lane), Kentucky (2015 Kilroys List/ World premiere:  Ensemble Studio Theatre in coproduction with Page 73 and the Radio Drama Network.  West Coast Premiere: East West Players), Two Mile Hollow (2017 Kilroys List, Simultaneous world premiere w/ Artists At Play in La, Mixed Blood/Theater Mu in Minneapolis, First Floor Theater in Chicago and Ferocious Lotus in SF), Death For Sydney Black (terraNova Collective, 2014 Kilroys Honorable Mention), Diversity Awareness Picnic (Clubbed Thumb/Playwrights Horizons Superlab, 2014 Kilroys Honorable Mention), Linus and Murray (EST/Marathon 2017), Hot Asian Doctor Husband (upcoming at Theater Mu/Mixed Blood in August 2019) and Nevada-Tan (an Audible commission coming soon).

She started out self-producing experimental comedies with her now defunct theater company Everywhere Theatre Group from 2006-2012 at places like the New Ohio Theatre, The Brick Theatre, Dixon Place, the Ontological Hysteric Theater/Incubator Arts Project the Prelude Festival and random boats and bars.  You can watch a partial archive of ETG’s history here.

Leah’s collections of short plays, Nagoriyuki & Other Short Plays and The Lowest Form Of Writing are currently available and are performed widely in the US, France and Asia. Other publications include American Theater Magazine, Nanjing University’s Stage and Screen Reviews, Yale University Press, Backstage, Smith and Krauss, Samuel French and Dramatists Play Service.

She has served on the faculty of New Group’s Urban Arts Initiative, ESPA at Primary Stages and the Writer’s Foundry at St. Joseph’s College, as well as teaching as a guest artist at schools around the country.

Leah is an alumnus of Youngblood at the Ensemble Studio Theater, terraNova Groundbreakers Playwrights Group, the Dorothy Strelsin New American Playwrights Group at Primary Stages and the Lab at WP Theater where she was a 2016-2018 Time Warner Fellow.

She is currently a labbie at Ma Yi and a member of Ensemble Studio Theatre.  She was a 2017 Ucross fellow with the Sundance Institute. She’s working on commissions from WP Theater, EST/SLOAN and Yale Rep.

Leah was awarded the first-ever Mark O’Donnell Prize from The Actors Fund and Playwrights Horizons.  She is also currently one of the inaugural recipients of a commission from Audible’s Emerging Playwrights Fund and was named the 2017-2019 Jerome New York Fellow at the Lark.

She  is a writer on  A24’s Ramy on Hulu and formerly, Michael Moore’s TV NATION.

She attended Tates Creek High School and has a MFA from Brooklyn College. The New York Times called her a “distinctive new voice.

Plays

Kentucky

God Said This

Hot Asian Doctor Husband

Linus And Murray

The Adventures Of Minami The Japanese Robot Who Makes You Feel Safe When Loneliness Is Palpable: Part 1

Thirty-six

Death For Sydney Black

Diversity Awareness Picnic

Big Girls Club (Happy Dance Dance Princess Show)