Laura Nessler

Laura Ellen Nessler is a Chicago playwright, dramaturg, and activist, hailing from Texas and graduated from University of Virginia.

A veteran of American Theatre Company's noted Bridge Program, for whom she wrote the play Cell Phone Phantasia, Laura has also worked with The State Theatre, City Lit, and twice has had plays premiere in Prologue Theatre Company's Landmark Theatre Festival, with Venus: The Capture in 2011 and At the Hop, a play directed by K. Hannah Freidman on the subject of illegal abortions in the 1950s and the "war on women" today in 2012 (pictured at right, At the Hop, featuirng Brenann Lyn Stacker.) Last year, Laura's play Taking Root, starring Brenann Lyn Stacker and 20% Theatre Artistic Director Lindsay Bartlett, premiered at 20%'s 2012 SNAPSHOTS Festival, directed by Anneliese Toft. Most recently, Laura's play It's Not Her, It's Us was featured at the Women in Theatre Alliance's 2013 New Play Development Workshop, in a production directed by Claire Redfield and featuring Anna Robinson and Leah Emmerich, and Laura's play Three Women Laugh While Eating Salad was featured in Knife & Fork's anthology production Better Now at Chicago's legendary Abbie Fest.

Laura also had a staged reading of her play Negative Splits at Chicago Dramatists and is currently writing a play about the murder of Viola Liuozzo and also an epic piece in the vein of Charles Dickens about a gay fireman taking on a food processing giant in small-town West Virginia.