Leyla Nazli

Leyla Nazli co-founded the Arcola Theatre with Mehmet Ergen in 2000, and has been Executive Producer at the theatre since 2004, producing all of the theatre’s in-house productions. She has worked as an adaptor, having translated Kroetz’s The Nest and adapted Gogol’s The Government Inspector for a performance at the Arcola in 2007.
In 2006 she was one of 50 promising new writers selected to take part in The Fifty, a year-long mentoring programme organised for the 50th anniversary of The Royal Court Theatre, in conjunction with the BBC. Writers were nominated by theatres nationwide and received a bursary, as well as masterclasses in writing for theatre, radio, film and television.
Subsequent to a rehearsed reading at the Royal Court, her debut play Silver Birch House opened to critical acclaim at the Arcola in 2007 (★★★★Time Out, ★★★★The Stage, ★★★★Evening Standard, ★★★★The Metro). Staged by Ergen, the play was described as ‘deeply moving’ by The Guardian, and as ‘a powerful piece of personal and political history’ by Time Out.
Her latest play, Mare Rider (★★★★ whatsonstage.com, ★★★★ Exeunt) was lauded as ‘a hallucinatory and disturbing revisionist feminist fable for our time’ by The Arts Desk, whilst The Stage praised it for its ‘unsentimental and illuminating sensitivity, pierced through with a no-nonsense wit’. Following its successful run at the Arcola, the production toured Europe in 2013, and the play prompted the Evening Standard to label Nazli as ‘a talent to track’. On the back of the success of Mare Rider, Nazli had a new play, She’s Yours, commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company earlier this year.

Credits

Silver Birch House opened to critical acclaim at the Arcola in 2007 (★★★★Time Out, ★★★★The Stage, ★★★★Evening Standard, ★★★★The Metro). Staged by Ergen, the play was described as ‘deeply moving’ by The Guardian, and as ‘a powerful piece of personal and political history’ by Time Out.
Her latest play, Mare Rider (★★★★ whatsonstage.com, ★★★★ Exeunt) was lauded as ‘a hallucinatory and disturbing revisionist feminist fable for our time’ by The Arts Desk, whilst The Stage praised it for its ‘unsentimental and illuminating sensitivity, pierced through with a no-nonsense wit’. Following its successful run at the Arcola, the production toured Europe in 2013, and the play prompted the Evening Standard to label Nazli as ‘a talent to track’. On the back of the success of Mare Rider, Nazli had a new play, She’s Yours, commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company earlier this year.

Training

Writing For Stage - Birkbeck Collage