Leela (she/her) is a stage and screen actor based in Chicago, IL.

The first in her family to earn a Bachelor’s Degree, Leela graduated from Illinois State University with a B.A. in Acting. In her time at school, Leela acted under the direction of five-time Emmy Award winner Jane Lynch in a production of Neil Simon’s Lost in Yonkers, interned with the Illinois Shakespeare Festival and acted in their traveling acting troupe “Bard in a Box”, and directed a production of Diana Son’s Stop Kiss. At school, Leela played eccentric and effervescent stage characters such as Yvette Pottier in Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children, Rosaura in Sueño by José Rivera, an adaptation of Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s Life Is a Dream, and Norma McCorvey aka “Jane Roe” in Roe by Lisa Loomer, plus several others. She has been nominated for the Kennedy Center’s Irene Ryan scholarship three times- for her performances as Rosaura, Norma McCorvey, and Patient Griselda/Nell/Jeanine in Carol Churchill’s Top Girls.

Since graduation, Leela has acted with reputable Chicago-area theatre companies such as Buffalo Theatre Ensemble and Haven Chicago. In Haven Chicago’s final “Director’s Haven” she played Woman in The Siren Song of Stephen Jay Gould by Benjamin Bettenbender. She has has also acted with the budding new company Ego Death Theatre Collective, playing Clare in a workshop of Personal Library by local Chicago playwright Emma S Rund. Leela has acted in a variety of indie film and TV projects, such as tv series Bleak Terminus. Her on-screen experience extends to several commercials- including two commercials directed by five-time Midwest Emmy winner Steve Weiss.

Besides “actor”, Leela can also be described as a dog mom, a voracious reader, a Drag Race superfan and generally huge fan of drag artists, a beginner guitarist, a letterboxd girly, and an artist (digital artist and analog collage animator with 7k+ on TikTok).