FULL LENGTHS 

KENTUCKY 

11 F, 5 M, 1 Cat (doubling possible 9 actors min, 16 max)

Hiro is a self-made woman making it in New York. But she is also single, almost thirty and estranged from her dysfunctional family who lives in Kentucky. When her little sister, a born-again Christian, decides to marry at twenty-two, Hiro takes it up on herself to do whatever she can to stop the wedding and salvage any shred of hope she had about her sister’s future. The themes of identity, religion and love collide in this unique coming-of-age story.

*CURRENTLY PLAYING AT ENSEMBLE STUDIO THEATRE IN A WORLD PREMIERE BY PAGE 73 PRODUCTIONS  RUNNING APRIL 20-MAY 22. Tickets here

Two Mile Hollow

3 F, 2 M

RSVP
email readings@primarystages.org
or call Sean Patrick O’Brien at 212-840-9705

DEATH FOR SYDNEY BLACK

6F, 1 Beaver

Three women are trapped in a narrative that degrades them.

Walking a line between being pointedly truthful and horribly offensive this play is a dark comedy about six teenage girls navigating the treacherous landscape of Northeast Valley High. When the new girl, Nancy, comes to town she must channel her entire self-worth into over throwing the most popular girl at school: Sydney Black. As she takes this journey, led by her quirky, Asian sidekick Jen, she discovers both the overt and covert girl-on-girl violence perpetrated throughout the school.With live music, original songs, and a talented all female cast, this promises to be quite the ride, a side-splitting satire about what it means to grow up as an all-American girl.

“Sydney Black veers sharply into self-reflexive parody…..Winkler’s absurdist comedy deftly handles these collective fourth wall-shattering moments without spiraling into cheap pastiche”-SunSentinel

“The play brings the audience into this changing world of growing pains and eye-opening realizations”-Florida Theater On The Stage

“Leah Nanako Winkler’s exploration of how women think of themselves, while bombarded by the perceptions and expectations of others, is worthwhile and often funny”- Nuvo NewsWeekly

*Death For Sydney Black received a world premiere  at The Empire Stage in Ft.Lauderdale Florida. It was produced by the Thinking Cap Theater and directed by Nicole Stoddard. The play has subsequently been performed at the Big Car Service Center in Indianapolis, Indiana. It was produced by No Exit Theater. In addition, a scene of the play opened for An Evening With Amy Sedaris at the Egyptian Room in Indianapolis, as part of the Spirit and Place Festival. It received a workshop production at IRT Theatre in NYC as part of TerraNova Collective’s RX seried in 2013, directed by Kip Fagan.

The script has enjoyed development at HERE arts Center, New Georges (mini-workshop), Cherry Lane ( As part of Asian And…), The Society Hill Playhouse/Luna Theater Company in Philadelphia and through Terra Nova Collective’s Groundbreakers Playwrights Group in NYC (reading at Incubator Arts Project and a workshop at IRT Theatre as part of 2012 Groundworks).

DIVERSITY AWARENESS PICNIC

3 F/3 M

It’s Diversity Awareness Week at Johnson-Brown University! This means even the employees of  the tele-FUN-draising department is required to participate in the mandatory Diversity Awareness activity at 3pm. As six employees ponder which color of the rainbow they might be and attempt to speak candidly with each other, uncomfortable tensions, anger and true love arise.

*Diversity Awareness Picnic has received development and support from the Ensemble Studio Theatre (Bloodworks 2012), Bushwick Starr (Reading series September 2012), The Flea Theater (Plays of Interest November 2012 and a subsequent workshop in Feb-March 2013), Playwrights Horizons/Clubbed Thumb (Superlab, November 2013), and CUNY (summertime rewrites 2014).

COPE

Risa, a journalist on her first big assignment, interviews and observes patients at the COPE clinic- a research center for those with prodromal symptoms for schizophrenia.

*COPE has received development from New York Theatre Workshop’s Mondays@3 series in 2014 and will have an upcoming reading at Second Stage in NYC ( summer 2015)

ENSEMBLE EXPERIMENTAL STUFF

Flying Snakes in 3-D!!!!!!

(written by Leah Nanako Winkler and Teddy Nicholas,  created by Everywhere Theatre Group) 

NOTE: I do not typically send this play out because it was collaboratively made.

An epic fusion of sci-fi parody, the avant-garde, and brutally autobiographical elements, in which a young and broke theater company challenge themselves to the ultimate task in order to pack the houses: to successfully make a play that is better suited for film. What they come up with is “Flying Snakes in 3-D,”where mutant killer snakes are accidentally released from CIA-enlisted scientific headquarters under the setting of earth under attack, and violent, bloody chaos ensues. Will The Heroes be able to defeat the snakes? Will the theatre company be able to make their play succeed in the face of overwhelming financial, technical and emotional obstacles? Packed with dance, cheap special effects, and absolutely stunning video design, this tongue-in-cheek parody wildly entertains while daring to ask the question: If theater is a dying art, why are we still making it?

“Weirdly, Flying Snakes in 3D!! may well be the show that generated the most interesting discussion thissummer in New York.”- Culturebot

*Flying Snakes In 3-D premiered as part of Ars Nova’s Ant Fest in November 2011 in NYC. It was produced in association with Everywhere Theatre Group and was subsequently co-produced and performed  at The Brick Theater in January 2012. In July 2012 the play was performed at Ice Factory at the New Ohio Theatre.

THE INTERNET.

Ensemble piece.  Four Main characters.

NOTE: NOTE: I do not typically send this play out because it was collaboratively made.

“Against a bare black set with a white floor and two large elevated video monitors, the 11 performers are all in constant motion dancing and singing, but four characters are central. In I.M.’s, Dan is wooing Nicki, the girlfriend of Tom — or so he’s known online — who chases Rachel  online behind Nicki’s back. On the monitors, you see the physical world, where people are glued to their laptops, and onstage there’s the emotional, where people flirt, cry, rant and plead for connection….the script, by Leah Winkler who directed with Lindsay Mack, effectively skewers the false personas and banal self-descriptions on dating Web sites while underscoring the longing”-The New York Times

*The Internet premiered at the Incubator Arts Project in New York, NY in August 2010. It was produced in association with Everywhere Theatre Group.

Big Girls Club (Happy Dance Dance Princess Show)

3/f, 1/M

It’s a girls’ night in for Lisa, Katie and Nancy. All they want is to be happy. But as they gorge themselves on unhealthy food and BUTTERFACE! the TV Show, the night escalates into a sadistic game of truth or dare that reveals a shockingly surrealistic glimpse to their disturbing world.  Big Girls Club (Happy Dance Dance Princess Show) is a play on uppers, exploring excess, fetishism and female cruelty propelled by our ever schizophrenic and media frenzied culture.

“There have been numerous pieces of theatre, film, television, and literature that have embarked on a journey into the psychologically violent depths of the social impact of female body image on the lives of women and young girls. Big Girls Club (The Happy Happy Dance Princess Show)…. is maybe the most direct and biting I have experienced”- Nytheatre.com

*Big Girls Club ( Happy Dance Dance Princess Show) premiered at The Brick Theatre as part of the Antidepressant Festival in July  2009. It was produced in association with Everywhere Theatre Group.