Nimisha Ladva
Nimisha Ladva is a storyteller and writer. Her storytelling has been featured on NPR’s Newsworks and on the Risk and First Person Arts Podcasts. She has been invited to tell stories at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the National Museum of Jewish American History, and the Philadelphia Free Library. She has won the First Person Arts Storytelling Grandslam and has been a finalist in the Philadelphia Moth storytelling grand slam. Her first play, When Sita’s Daughters Cross the Line, debuted at the Painted Bride Short Play Festival in August 2015. Nimisha’s short stories have been published in the US and UK. She conducts workshops and presentations on both storytelling and oral communication and is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Writing and English at Haverford College.
Awarded Grants
2022
Window of Opportunity Grant (WOO)
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Overview
Nimisha Ladva’s play, Goddess at the Lucky Lady Motel, has been selected by PlayPenn’s New Play Development Conference for a staged reading in July 2022. PlayPenn’s Conference includes workshops and readings of new plays, forums for artists, seminars, and classes, all centered around fostering artists by providing as many resources possible. Goddess at The Lucky Lady Motel follows Mummy-ji, a first generation South Asian immigrant, and her son, Ravi, who clash over almost everything. Nimisha’s work confronts conversations around caste bigotry, misogyny, and the generational divide.
This grant will support personal transportation and childcare costs for Nimisha to make this opportunity a reality. It will also cover registration fees to attend the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas conference in Philadelphia, where she will have networking opportunities with literary managers working in U.S. theaters, as part of supporting the continued development of the play.
2018
Window of Opportunity Grant (WOO)
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Overview
Nimisha has been invited to perform her one-woman show, Uninvited Girl: An Immigrant Story, during the Women in Theater Festival in New York City this June. The play's content is part of a larger cultural shift to diversify the kinds of stories that are represented on the stage, and to bring new live audiences into formal theater spaces. With the grant, Nimisha will be able to travel to NYC with enough time to prepare for the show with her collaborators, meet her childcare needs, and connect with other cultural change agents and artists attending the festival. Uninvited Girl tells the story of a South Asian woman's journey to adjust to the ways of her new country.
2015
Art and Change Grant (ACG)
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Overview
Nimisha will write and perform When Sita’s Daughters Crossed the Line, a one-act play in five monologues. The play tells the story of how an immigrant woman of Indian descent transforms the limits of her cultural traditions to discover the freedom to be her authentic self. Nimisha’s play combines her own experience growing up in an immigrant family and the retelling of the Ramayana, a classic Indian epic. She intends to use the play to bring awareness to the struggles of undocumented immigrants, and to add a feminist perspective to the role of women in India and the diaspora. When Sita’s Daughters Crossed the Line will be presented as part of the 15th Annual First Person Arts Festival in 2016 and will include a post-performance artist talkback.
