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Laura Somers holds a BFA in Theater/Directing from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Having directed approximately 30 plays and films to date, Laura Somers' productions have been declared by American Theater Magazine as "hot and hip”. She has received grants to produce her work twice by IBM and once from the City of Austin. In 2008-2009, she was the recipient of a talent development fellowship with Film Independent’s Project:Involve. She is thrilled to have been recently recruited to direct for BrevityTV.com, an up-and-coming LA based sketch comedy group. Currently, Laura wrote and is set to direct Mandoula, a comedy about a middle-aged commitment-phobe who becomes a birth coach for expectant fathers. She is also writing The Gypsy Chain, a revenge thriller about a young woman grieving the death of her childhood friend. As she investigates his death, she becomes involved with a radical environmental group and finds herself on the frontlines of a political battlefield in a Northern California community polarized by the logging industry. Laura recently co-wrote and co-directed Love 10 to 1, a romantic comedy feature directed and written by three women (Somers being the third) about the highs and lows in the search for ‘the one’. It is produced by Good Karma Films. Her segment of the film is titled Diving Lessons.
Her script, For the Last Sixth Time, a drama about a woman whose listless mate draws her in again and again until she decides to get the upper hand, was the recipient of the Grand Jury Prize for Project Involve’s City Stories, and was sponsored by Banana Republic, Vanity Fair and Film Independent. She has also directed four episodes of the web series, The World of Cory and Sid, a comedy about two slackers who create wild schemes for rent money, produced by Hardly Working Entertainment and can be seen on KoldcastTV.com. In 2008, Laura was commissioned by UCLA Medical Center to create Finding P.E.A.C.E., an educational film for cancer patients undergoing esophageal surgery. It is currently being screened at medical conferences and in the homes of patients nationwide and was a finalist for the 2009 International Health and Media Awards. Additionally, Laura has been a guest director and lecturer at Austin Community College. Between 1999 and 2003, she was Co-Artistic Director of the critically acclaimed, award-winning theater company the dirigo group in Austin, TX. A Texan by birth, she currently lives in Los Angeles.
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