Nimisha Ladva

Nimisha Ladva was born in Kenya to Indian immigrants, raised in the U.K. and currently lives outside Philadelphia. She is a dual British and U.S. citizen. Nimisha is a playwright, screenwriter, and storyteller. Her fiction and non-fiction writing has been published in the U.S and U.K., including a recent personal essay in The Guardian. Her storytelling performances have been broadcast on NPR and BBC Radio 4 on The Moth Radio Hour and on PBS’s Stories from the Stage. In 2022, her play Goddess at the Lucky Lady Motel was a Play Penn New Play Development Conference selection, a finalist for the Jane Chambers Award in Feminist Playwriting, and featured in The Bechdel Group’s Sunday Shorts Program. Her play, “Laundry is Not Enough,” was a 2022 finalist in the Red Bull Short Play Festival...

Nimisha Ladva was born in Kenya to Indian immigrants, raised in the U.K. and currently lives outside Philadelphia. She is a dual British and U.S. citizen. Nimisha is a playwright, screenwriter, and storyteller. Her fiction and non-fiction writing has been published in the U.S and U.K., including a recent personal essay in The Guardian. Her storytelling performances have been broadcast on NPR and BBC Radio 4 on The Moth Radio Hour and on PBS’s Stories from the Stage. In 2022, her play Goddess at the Lucky Lady Motel was a Play Penn New Play Development Conference selection, a finalist for the Jane Chambers Award in Feminist Playwriting, and featured in The Bechdel Group’s Sunday Shorts Program. Her play, “Laundry is Not Enough,” was a 2022 finalist in the Red Bull Short Play Festival. Nimisha was a 2020 finalist at SPACE at Ryder Farm, an artist residency. In 2019, she was selected for the Kennedy Center Playwriting Intensive. Her solo play, Uninvited, which tells the true story of her journey from becoming an undocumented immigrant to a U.S.citizen, was initially staged at the First Person Arts Festival in 2016, and premiered in New York at the Women in Theater Festival in 2018. She is currently a member of The Foundry, Philadelphia’s three-year playwright incubator. She teaches writing and public speaking at Haverford College.

Scripts

Goddess at the Lucky Lady Motel

by Nimisha Ladva

Synopsis

Goddess at the Lucky Lady Motel is a 90-minute, three actor play. In it, Mummy-ji’s plans to arrange her son’s marriage are upended by a death in the family and the unexpected arrival of an “unsuitable girl.” Worse, a betrayal about the future of the motel threatens to destroy the life she has always known. Can she confront her own misogyny and caste bigotry to make amends with her son, or will she lose...

Goddess at the Lucky Lady Motel is a 90-minute, three actor play. In it, Mummy-ji’s plans to arrange her son’s marriage are upended by a death in the family and the unexpected arrival of an “unsuitable girl.” Worse, a betrayal about the future of the motel threatens to destroy the life she has always known. Can she confront her own misogyny and caste bigotry to make amends with her son, or will she lose everything she has loved? Can the mystical power of a whirling garba dance summon the Goddess to America or has the Feminine Divine long forgotten Her far-flung daughters, just as Mummy-ji fears?

Shanti at Peace

by Nimisha Ladva

Synopsis

Shanti contracts Covid-19 at the hospital where she works and comforts her anxious teenage daughter, who worries that her mother may die alone.

Shanti contracts Covid-19 at the hospital where she works and comforts her anxious teenage daughter, who worries that her mother may die alone.

Laundry is Not Enough

by Nimisha Ladva

Synopsis

A simple request to be in the school production of A Midsummer Night's Dream turns a household chore into battleground between mother and daughter--until each reveals the secrets that bring them closer together.

A simple request to be in the school production of A Midsummer Night's Dream turns a household chore into battleground between mother and daughter--until each reveals the secrets that bring them closer together.