Durra Leung 柯杜華 is a Guangzhou-born, NYC-based multilingual writer and composer whose genre-bending work spans stage, screen, and concert halls. In the 2025–2026 season, his opera The People vs. American Cheese (libretto by Clare Fuyuko Bierman) will be produced by Chicago’s Thompson Street Opera Company. Earlier in 2025, his play Hey Hey sold out at UNDER St Marks Theater.
Durra’s other original compositions have been performed at NYC venues including 54 Below, Joe’s Pub, and Symphony Space, as well as in Virginia, Wisconsin, and broadcast on the radio in China. He also composes for dance and film, including the short film Your Smile (dir. Haochen Yang), which entered the Cannes Film Festival in 2020.
As a translator, Durra provided new Cantonese lyrics and translations for the revised version of Thoroughly Modern Millie (2002 Tony Award for Best Musical), most recently produced by Japan’s Toho Company in 2024. He also contributed Mandarin and Japanese lyric translations to Everything I Know: Mandy Gonzalez Sings Lin-Manuel Miranda, a symphony concert tour including a Carnegie Hall stop in November 2025.
Durra has worked as a freelance producer for The Play Company, Williamstown Theatre Festival, and PROTOTYPE Festival, and previously created the Tin Pan Alley 2 Concert Series, a bimonthly showcase for emerging musical theatre writers.
An alum of NYU’s Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program (composer) and a member of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop (librettist), Durra is a two-time recipient of Queens Arts Fund New Work Grant (for Durra Leung’s Lullabies for Motherf*ckers Vol.1 and Vol.2, two full-length musicals within a multiverse trilogy), and a finalist for Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellowship, NYTW 2050 Artistic Fellowship, and Vivace Award. He has held fully subsidized artist residencies in Upstate New York, Maine, and Virginia.
Photo by Mengwen Cao, Courtesy of A4