Madhuri Shekar

Madhuri Shekar is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter. She was born in California and grew up in India, and is currently based in Jersey City. She is an alum of the Juilliard Playwriting program, a fellow at New Dramatists, and the 2020 winner of the Lanford Wilson Playwriting award.

Her audio play Evil Eye debuted on the Audible bestseller list in May 2019, and won the 2020 Audie Award for Best Original Work. Her play House of Joy received its world premiere at Cal Shakes in August 2019, and her new play Dhaba on Devon Avenue was slated to premiere at Victory Gardens in April 2020, and is postponed till we emerge into a new post-pandemic life.

Her other plays include Queen (2019 New York Innovative Theatre Awards, Outstanding Original Full Length Script; Edgerton New Play Award), In Love and Warcraft (Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Award), A Nice Indian Boy, Antigone: Presented by the Girls of St. Catherine's and the TYA play Bucket of Blessings (Suzi Bass Award for Outstanding Original Work - TYA).

Her plays have also been developed or showcased at Center Theatre Group, the Old Globe, the Kennedy Center, the Hedgebrook Playwrights Festival, South Coast Repertory, the Movement Theater Company, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Ma-Yi Theatre, NY Stage & Film and Juilliard.

She has an MFA in Dramatic Writing from USC, and a dual Master’s degree in Global Media and Communications from the London School of Economics and USC. She is an alumna of the Ma-Yi writers lab and the Center Theatre Group Writers Workshop, and a co-creator of the Shakespearean web series Titus and Dronicus.

She was a staff writer for the upcoming HBO show The Nevers, and her feature film adaptation of Evil Eye is currently in post-production.