Nadya Wynd

Nadya was born in the Azores Islands, Portugal and also lived in Germany as a child. She has lived all over the United States and has traveled extensively around the world. Storytelling though the arts is her passion, with a special emphasis on social issues and indigenous cultures around the world. Her goal is to create stories that that bring meaning to the present and hope for the future. After a career in counseling, social work and teaching, Nadya began studying acting in Austin, Texas. While in Austin, she coordinated Plays for Living, a program of plays about social issues, produced by the Family Service Association of America. During this time, Nadya studied Film Production in the Graduate Program at the University of Texas. A few years later, Nadya moved to Los Angeles where she worked as an actress and in production positions in film, television and theater. She also began work on a screenplay adaptation of The Physician, an epic, six hundred-page, historical novel about the very beginnings of modern medicine by best-selling author Noah Gordon. This novel became a record-breaking best seller in Germany and Austria and best book of the year in Spain. After a bidding war between several companies, Nadya accepted an offer to be writer/co-producer for a feature film project of The Physician for Rialto, a German film production company. In 1999, Nadya wrote, produced and directed The Beautiful Illusion, a 33-minute, narrative film about the sexual exploitation of an actress. Starring De Lane Matthews (co-star of "Dave's World" and "From the Earth to the Moon") and Tyrone Power, Jr. ("Cocoon" and "Cocoon, the Return," the film was an official selection of the New York and Los Angeles Independent Film Festivals and aired on PBS television. The film will was recently screened for #Me Too and Beyond: Taking the Next Step, a community fundraiser and educational forum held in 2018 on Kauai. In Santa Cruz, California, Nadya wrote, produced and directed original musical theater for several years, forming Evergreen Theater Company, a non-profit, family theater company. During this time, she also taught drama and creative writing in a private, arts-oriented elementary school. Nobody's Boy, Evergreen Theater Company's final production, which Nadya wrote, produced and directed, premiered at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium to near sell-out audiences. Set in the passionate, magical world of a Gypsy circus family travelling through France in 1889, it was inspired by the classic French novel, Sans Famille by Hector Malot. Staged as theater in the round, the production featured live Gypsy music and dance, circus performances and a real draft horse pulling a Gypsy wagon on stage. Nadya formed the non-profit company Tropicbird Entertainment on Kauai. Tropicbird produced a dinner theatre production of Ghosts of the Sinclair Plantation, which Nadya wrote, produced and directed. She adapted this stage play into a low-budget, supernatural, murder mystery screenplay. Based on extensive historical research, the story also portrays the native Hawaiian spirit world through magical realism. This project was developed in Creative Lab Hawaii, a media accelerator program funded by the State of Hawaii, Creative Industries Division, a sponsor of the American Film Market. The Producers Guild of America, the Writers Guild of America, and the Screen Actors Guild/AFTRA are among its partners. Nadya was selected to participate in the Screenwriters Fellowship in 2018 and the Producers Fellowship in 2019. Her coaches included Mollye Asher, producer of the 2021 Academy Award-winning film Nomadland and Iris Yamashita, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter for Letters from Iwa Jima. Nadya is in production a on a feature documentary about a rich, ancient, nomadic, ancestral culture in the Sahara Desert threatened with extinction due to climate change, environmental destruction and the pressures of globalization.