Leslie Urdang

Leslie R. Urdang (born February 20, 1956) is an American film producer and theatre executive.

Urdang attended Forest Hills High School in New York City, where she was Chairman of Senior SING! 1972 during her senior year, and at which she was the graduation speaker in 2016. She originally aspired to become a US senator, earning a B.A. in political science from the University of Pennsylvania. In 1977, Urdang interned for U.S. Senator John A. Durkin (D-N.H.), assisting with constituent communications and issue research. Originally a Republican, she became a Democrat.

But in 1978 Urdang tore up her application to the John F. Kennedy School of Government and instead sought and won entry to the Yale School of Drama, graduating in 1981. Her thesis there explored integrating the development of plays and films, which inspired her professional work.

Urdang began dancing professionally as a child in George Balanchine's staging of The Nutcracker, a chapter of her life documented in the 2006 film The Nutcracker Family: Behind the Magic.

After graduating from Yale's drama school in 1981, she, Mark Linn-Baker and Max Mayer co-founded New York Stage and Film as an institution for professional playwrights, directors, actors, and designers, as well apprentices, to live and work together to move their plays to Broadway and theaters throughout the nation. Projects have included the Tony Award winning plays Sideman and Tru, John Patrick Shanley's Pulitzer and Tony Award winning Doubt, and most notably the epochal, multiple-award-winning musical Hamilton. Urdang continues to be a Producing Director of the institution.

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