Laila Ayad is a Tunisian-American actor, singer, writer, and founding member of Ovation Award-winning IAMA Theatre Company. She is a champion for new play development, and is passionate about working with writers to develop new works for the American stage. She developed DreamWorks’ The Prince of Egypt (in the leading role of Tzipporah), and developed both Christopher Gabriel Núñez's Locusts and Stephen Belber’s Joan (opposite Laila Robins and Patrick J. Adams) at the Ojai Playwrights Conference. World premiere credits include Leslye Headland’s Cult of Love, Bachelorette and Reverb, D.G. Watson’s Unbound, Nina Braddock’s Baby Play and Christian Durso’s Shiner, which she debuted Off-Broadway. Other favorite theater credits include Lucy Loves Desi (National Tour), Seven (National Tour), The Mystery of King Tut (National Tour), the Los Angeles premiere of John Patrick Shanley’s French Waitress, Gruesome Playground Injuries (Dairy Arts Center), The Last Days of Mary Stuart (Son of Semele Ensemble), Macbeth (Gielgud Theatre), and Why We Have a Body (The Producers' Club). Film, TV, and VO credits include four seasons as Charlotte Reid on ABC’s Scandal, guest stars on Grey’s Anatomy, Reception, Exodus Fall, the L.A. Theatre Works recordings of Once Upon a Time in Nazi Occupied Tunisia and The Confession of Henry Jekyll, M.D. (opposite Seamus Dever), and the English dubs of Disney's Virgin The Series, Hulu's The Nightingale of Bursa, and Hulu's Between the World and Us (in the leading role of Ilkin). Laila has taught master classes in theater performance at Middlebury College, University of Richmond, Miami University, and the Santander Performing Arts Center. As a writer, her essays have been published in The Bedford Reader, The Mercer Street Journal, and Boston University's Core Journal. She is a longtime writing mentor with Young Storytellers, a program that engages creativity and promotes literacy through the art of storytelling in the Los Angeles public school system. Laila received her BFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and is a proud member of SAG-AFTRA and AEA.
