Aya Ogawa is a Tokyo-born, Brooklyn-based playwright, director, performer, and translator whose work reflects an international viewpoint, centers women/non-binary perspectives, and uses the stage as a space for exploring cultural identity and the immigrant experience. They were awarded a 2023 Helen Merrill Award for Playwriting.
Ogawa has written and directed many plays including oph3lia at HERE, Journey to the Ocean at the Foundry Theatre, and Ludic Proxy at The Play Company. Most recently they wrote, directed, and performed in The Nosebleed at Japan Society and The Chocolate Factory Theater in 2021; the Lincoln Center Theater in 2022; and the Woolly Mammoth Theatre in 2023. They received an Obie Award for the creation, writing, and direction of The Nosebleed, whose cast was nominated for a Lucille Lortel Award for outstanding ensemble. The play will tour to the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis, REDCAT in Los Angeles, and Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio in 2024.
They directed Haruna Lee’s Obie Award-winning Suicide Forest at The Bushwick Starr and Ma-Yi Theater Company, and Maiko Kikuchi and Spencer Lott’s 9000 Paper Balloons at HERE and Japan Society. They have translated numerous Japanese plays into English including work by Toshiki Okada, Satoko Ichihara, and Yudai Kamisato; many of which have been published and produced in the U.S. and U.K.
Ogawa is currently developing Meat Suit: the shitshow that is motherhood, commissioned by The Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis. They wrote parts of Meat Suit while at MacDowell, and it has previously been workshopped at New Dramatists, The Mercury Store, and The Jar. They are also working on an adaptation of Kafka’s Metamorphosis
as a solo performance in collaboration with Saori Tsukada with new music by Philip Glass.
