Laura Winters
Writer, Actor
& Relatable Third Thing
to Prove Humanity
Reviews for ALL OF ME playing @ The New Group
"Mercilessly funny script" - The New Yorker
“All of Me is structurally tight, has well-developed and complex characters, and explores disability issues with nuance, all while being genuinely hilarious. Winters does something rare in the comedic playwriting world, successfully including multiple styles of humor." - TheatreMania
“The play is laugh-out-loud funny, and it works so well because it doesn’t try to uplift or educate the audience. Instead, it authentically represents the characters and bakes the challenging experience of disability in America into the plot.” - New York Theatre Guide
“Winters pays careful attention to the dynamics of living with disabilities that we rarely see depicted onstage, like balancing personal agency with the realities of needing assistance.” - New York Times
“Playwright Laura Winters‘ gift for dialogue and characterization guides us to a fuller appreciation of these seemingly limited individuals...just different, but nevertheless complete.” - Stage and Cinema
“All of Me makes you laugh uproariously one moment and gives you a lump in your throat the next.” —Frank Scheck, NyStage Review
Welcome!
I'm Laura! I write plays, musicals, movies, and television - most of which have a strong social justice thread woven into layers of fun, dynamic characters and surprising plots. I believe people from underrepresented identities belong on stage and screen, and that their roles should be comedic and complex. What I don't know from my lived experience I learn from open, honest, earnest collaboration with artists who do.
My work has won the Burman New Play Prize, a Drama League Next Stage Residency, been a finalist and a semi-finalist for the National Playwrights Conference, the grand prize winner of both ScreenCraft's Pilot and Playwriting awards, and the winner of the East Valley Children's Theatre Playwriting Competition, and a AriZoni theatre award for Best Original Script. My work has also been recognized by the Susan Smith Blackburn committee, Relentless Award, Princess Grace Awards, Ryder Farms, Ground Floor, The Bechdel Group, Corkscrew Theatre Festival, Pete's Candy Store, NY Winterfest, Dixon Place. Her play ALL OF ME had a world premiere at Barrington Stage.
I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago with a white-picket childhood that included my mom co-founding a community theatre in a church basement three blocks from our house. After a high school career of show choir and marching band, I decided to keep my many midwestern talents in the midwest by attending Northwestern University. I majored in theatre, minored in writing, and also snagged a certificate in musical theatre.
After living in NYC for 6 years, I moved to Los Angeles where all time not spent writing is spent willing the LAX Metro stop to open.