Creator and Performer

Growing up in Texas, first-generation Iranian-American, Layla Khoshnoudi took to storytelling to reconcile the incongruities of the world from an early age. Her first collaborators were shampoo bottles (Suave was a heartbreaker); then barbies, which she played with to such a ripe age that they had to be strategically hidden from her peers and family members; and ultimately other human beings, when she immersed herself in the dramatic arts in Brooklyn College's MFA Acting program over a decade ago. Since then she’s cultivated a steady practice of theater making and has had the chance to act in such world premieres as Men on Boats, Sensuality Party, and Dance Nation. Eventually her own words found their way to the page and The Bushwick Starr’s production of i'm not even half, this fall, will be her premiere as a playwright. This work lives in the shadowy corridors of the female psyche, a place of great interest to the artist.