Leah Nanako Winkler


Leah Nanako Winkler is a Japanese American playwright from Kamakura, Japan and Lexington, Kentucky currently living in New York City. Her play God Said This won the 2018 Yale Drama Series Prize.

Early life

Winkler was born in Kamakura, Japan to a Japanese mother and an American father, was a child model in Japan because of her Western looks and she modeled for a clothing magazine called Samantha. She came to the United States while still only a child and spoke primarily only Japanese. She learned English, but continued to study Japanese in a Japanese school. She grew up in Lexington, Kentucky and she credits her high school drama teacher at Tates Creek High School for introducing her to theatre. Winkler moved to New York in 2006 to become a writer with the money she earned donating eggs to a fertility clinic. She worked many odd jobs to support herself and her theater career including working overnights at a 24 hour Starbucks. She received an MFA from Brooklyn College in 2018.

Career

Once in New York, Winkler formed her own theatre company called Everywhere Theatre Group. ETG produced Leah's plays as well as collaboratively written plays including Big Girls Club, Dead People, Formula Play, A Pale Horse Death Followed With: A Life Time Original Series at downtown venues including The Brick, Dixon Place and the Ontological Hysteric Theater. In 2010 ETG's play The Internet garnered favorable reviews in the New York Times. In 2011 Flying Snakes in 3D!!, a science fiction parody meta-play about making a play when you aren't white and don't come from money ran at the Brick Theater before transferring to the New Ohio and stirred public heated debates regarding class privileged in the theater community. Leah was subsequently invited to present a manifesto regarding these issues at the Prelude Festival In 2012 alongside Richard Foreman and Mac Wellman. Shortly after ETG imploded. Leah continued to self-produce her short-form experimental work often at bars alongside poets and musicians. In 2013 Winkler published Nagoriyuki And Other Short Plays: Performed in NYC between 2008-2013. In 2014, she had two plays Death for Sydney Black and Diversity Awareness Picnic on The Kilroys' List, a gender parity initiative highlighting underproduced works by female playwrights. In August 2014, Leah's play Taisetsu Na Hito was selected from an initial pool of 1,385 submissions to be performed at Sam French's Offf Off Broadway Festival Plays, 39th series It was published later that year.
In 2015, Winkler published another book of plays, The Lowest Form of Writing Her play Double Suicide At Ueno Park was produced by Ensemble Studio Theater. Her blog post about a yellowface production of The Mikado started a protest and led to further controversy.
In 2016, Winkler's play Kentucky was on the Kilroys list and had its world premiere at the Ensemble Studio Theatre as a co-production with the Radio Drama Network and Page 73 Productions in New York. The play garnered favorable reviews and the Times called her a "Distinctive New Voice"
Th West Coast premiere was at East West Players in Los Angeles in the fall.
In spring 2017, she was selected by the Sundance institute as a Sundance/Ucross Fellow. Winkler was then named the 2017-2019 Jerome New York Fellow at the Lark. after being awarded the first-ever Mark O'Donnell Prize from the Actors Fund and Playwrights Horizons. She also became one of Audible's first ever recipients of the Emerging Playwrights Fund to write an audio play. Leah's play Two Mile Hollow had arolling premiere at four theaters across the U.S., The First Floor Theater, Mixed Blood Theatre/Theater Mu, Ferocious Lotus, and Artists at Play to critical acclaim.
In 2018, her playGod Said This was selected for the 42nd Humana Festival of New American Plays, in Louisville, Kentucky in February–April 2018. In March, 2018, God Said This was selected by Pulitzer Prize winning Ayad Akhtar from over 1600 plays from 50 countries to win the Yale Drama Series Prize. It premiered Off-Broadway in 2019 at Primary Stages. Also in 2019 she premiered her play Hot Asian Doctor Husband at Theater Mu and Mixed Blood and an audio play, Nevada-Tan exclusively on Audible.
Winkler is an alumna of the Youngblood group at the Ensemble Studio Theatre, a member of the Ma-Yi Writers Lab, a Time Warner Fellow at WP Theater, and a member of the Dorothy Strelsin New American Playwrights Group at Primary Stages.

Selected Plays