Nandita Shenoy is an actor-writer in New York City who loves to hear an audience laugh.  When not making theater or supporting her fellow theater artists, Nandita enjoys cooking with bacon, costume dramas, and eating chocolate.

Nandita's latest full-length play, The Future Is Female…, will receive its World Premiere at the Flint Repertory Theatre in Flint, MI in February 2023. Her Rage Play, was in rehearsals for its World Premiere by Flux Theatre Ensemble at the Abrons Arts Center on the Lower East Side of New York City when the Coronavirus Pandemic hit. As a result, the production was cancelled, but the play was named to the 2020 Kilroy’s List. During the pandemic, she pivoted to writing digital plays that have been produced by Mile Square Theatre, Live & In Color, Clutch Productions, Ars Nova, the Cleveland Play House, and Cherry Picking. She also continued to develop The Future Is Female… with the support of Leviathan Lab, Dorset Theatre Festival, Miami of Ohio University, and Theatreworks Silicon Valley.  Her most produced play, Washer/Dryer, had its Off-Broadway premiere at Theatre Row in February 2016, produced by Ma-Yi Theater.   Washer/Dryer received its World Premiere at East West Players in February 2015 as a part of their 50th Anniversary Season.  Washer/Dryer was also seen in Chicago as part of Rasaka Theatre's residency at Victory Gardens and in Seattle as a co-production between SIS Productions and Pratidhwani. A monologue from the show was published in 2018 Best Women’s Stage Monologues by Smith & Krauss.  Another full length play Lyme Park: An Austonian Romance of an Indian Nature was produced by the Hegira at the Round House Theater in Silver Spring, Maryland. Satisfaction, was presented as part of the "Main Stage Live" program at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.   Her one-acts Marrying Nandini, By Popular Demand, Rules of Engagement, and A More Perfect Date have received full productions in New York City from Green Light Productions, New Perspectives Theater, New Ground Collective, and Eating Theater respectively.  She is the recipient of a 2022-23 Hermitage Artists Retreat Fellowship, a Mellon Creative Research Fellowship at the University of Washington in Seattle in 2018 and the 2014 Father Hamblin One Act Commission Prize from the Abingdon Theater. Nandita’s plays have been read at the Kennedy Center, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, Second Generation, Salaam Theater, the Bleecker Street Theater, The Lark Play Development Center, the Philadelphia Women’s Theater Festival, and by the Red Harlem Readers. .

As an actor, Nandita was most recently seen at Clubbed Thumb in Angela Hanks’ Bodies They Ritual as part of their Summerworks series. She returned to the stage post-pandemic as multiple roles in Persuasion Off-Broadway at Bedlam after being last seen as Lucy Steele in Sense & Sensibility by Kate Hamill at Virginia Stage Company. She is grateful to have book-ended the pandemic with adaptations of her favorite novelist, Jane Austen. In the Before times, she originated roles in the World Premieres of Chelsea Marcantel’s Tiny Houses at Cleveland Play House and Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park and of Madhuri Shekar’s House of Joy at Cal Shakes. She starred in the Off-Broadway Production of her own play, Washer/Dryer, produced by Ma-Yi Theater.  She has been a part of the World Premiere casts of Marian, or the True Tale of Robin Hood at the New Ohio in New York and Mercy at New Jersey Rep, both by Adam Szymkowicz, Trouble Cometh by Richard Dresser at the San Francisco Playhouse, and of Some Other Kind of Person by Eric Pfeffinger at Philadelphia's InterAct Theater.  Favorite roles include Amita in Sloppy Second Chances by Mrinalini Kamath at EST, and Seema in The Last Surviving Heir by Sarovar Banka at Desipina's 7-11 Theater.  She was a member of the Repertory Company of the Alabama Shakespeare Festival for a season where she played Ursula in Much Ado About Nothing, Miss Poppenghul in Moonlight and Magnolias, and Lucius in Julius Caesar. 

Nandita recently made her feature film debut opposite Marcus Ho in Love,Repeat released to Amazon and iTunes by Freeform. Television credits include Evil on Paramount+, Dickinson on Apple+, The Last OG on TBS, and Daredevil on Netflix. She can also be seen in national commercials for IBM, GoDaddy, and HP.

In addition to creating theater, Nandita is an advocate for diversity in the theater and sits on the Steering Committee of the Asian American Performers Action Coalition which won a 2022 Tony Honor for Excellence in the Theater and a 2020 Obie Award for Advocacy in the field of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. She formerly presided over the Board of Rising Circle Theater Collective.  She has also been a participant of the South Asian Theater Arts Movement.

Nandita also had a short career as a blogger writing about shirtless men. But then Instagram took over.

Nandita holds a BA from Yale University in English literature with a distinction in the major.  She is a member of the Ma-Yi Writers' Lab, dtfwaw, the Dramatists Guild, and the Lincoln Center Directors Lab.  Proud member of AEA and SAG-AFTRA.