Is America’s Favorite Playwright Too Much for New York?
Slate
The first thing you need to know about Lauren Gunderson, the most popular playwright in America, is that she writes really fast. The day I met her, she sent me an email telling me that in rehearsal, the cast of her newest show would be reading through Act 2, “which I just re-wrote this morning.” She sent the email at 8:45 a.m.
The Top 20* Most-Produced Playwrights of the 2019-20 Season
American Theatre Magazine
By this point you’d think Lauren Gunderson would run out of quotes to give us about being the most-produced playwright in American (again). After all, this is the second season she has been at the top of the most-produce playwrights list (and last season she was #2). But Gunderson continues to be delightfully surprised and enthusiastic.
Using Theater As A Platform For Activism, Local Actors Join Groups Nationwide To Stage Play About Gun Violence
WBUR
Nineteen years ago on Friday, two students opened fire on their classmates and teachers at Columbine High School in Colorado. To mark the anniversary of that tragedy — and to remember the ones that came before and that followed — young people are joining a National School Walkout. But some students, and adults, will be using a different platform to make their voices heard: theater.
KQED Forum: Lauren Gunderson's New Play Takes A Stand Against Gun Violence
KQED Forum
Lauren Gunderson, the most produced playwright in America, is launching a nationwide campaign of theater activism against gun violence with her new play, "Natural Shocks." She is waiving royalties to the piece, so that communities across the country can put on readings the weekend of April 20th -- the 19th anniversary of the Columbine school massacre. Gunderson joins Forum to discuss her commitment to ending gun violence and how theater can be used as a means of social change.
Protesting guns one play at a time
The Enquirer (Cincinnati)
Playwright Lauren Gunderson was a junior at Decatur (Ga.) High School when the Columbine High School shooting took place in 1999. The 17-year-old instantly kicked into activist mode, organizing protests, writing an op-ed piece in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and traveling to Washington D.C. to urge legislators to take action. Nineteen years have passed. School shootings still take place with alarming frequency. Gunderson is still an activist. But today, she has a platform far larger than the one she had as a teenager.
Lauren Gunderson: the most popular playwright in America today
The Guardian
With 27 productions in the 2017-18 season, the 35-year-old writer has brought incisive wit to the stage and she’s thrilled to be at the forefront of a cultural shift in a male-dominated world.
You’ve Probably Never Heard of America’s Most Popular Playwright
The New Yorker
On a six-hour drive from San Francisco to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival a few years ago, the playwright Lauren Gunderson raised a question: What does American theatre need? “It was ridiculously presumptuous,” Gunderson told me recently, over the phone, “but it’s the conversation everyone is having.” Gunderson was travelling with her friend Margot Melcon, a former literary manager, who reminded her that every theatre needs a holiday show: something clever, heartwarming, and family-friendly enough to entice an audience inured to “A Christmas Carol.” Gunderson recalled their idea: “You know what people love? Jane Austen. You know what people really love? Christmas and Jane Austen.”
The Top 20 Most-Produced Playwrights of the 2017-18 Season
American Theatre Magazine
This year, when I finished calculating the Top 20 Most-Produced Playwrights list for 2017-18, and saw who was at the top, I let out a laugh. “Of course!” I exclaimed. I was not surprised by the name at the top; she had been on it last year, at No. 2, just under August Wilson. It was almost poetic.
Lauren Gunderson was vacationing in Italy when we contacted her to say she’d graduated to the top of our most-produced play list. “This is incredible news on so many levels,” she said over email.
Playwright Lauren Gunderson is enjoying a wave of interest
Atlanta Journal Constitution (Associated Press)
Lauren Gunderson is such a rare theatrical talent, you might be tempted to approach her very quietly, so as not to frighten her away.
“Indeed. Be careful. I might disappear,” she says, conspiratorially.
Gunderson is a young female playwright, which is special enough. She’s also prolific and has produced across the country. Plus, she loves writing complex characters for women. Can she really exist?
KQED Forum: Local Playwright Lauren Gunderson
KQED Forum
Lauren Gunderson is on a roll: nine plays produced by Bay Area theater companies in less than three years. In this hour, we'll talk about two of those productions, both of which had their world premieres this month: “I and You,” now at the Marin Theater Company, follows two teenagers who are forced to work together on a project about poet Walt Whitman and "The Taming," a modern political take on Shakespeare.
Playwright at a prolific stage of her career
SFGate
Lauren Gunderson's new plays are sprouting around the Bay Area right now in a run of premieres one well-regarded local pundit calls unprecedented.
At Thick House in San Francisco, in a Crowded Fire production, three actresses are playing multiple roles in Gunderson's "The Taming," a contemporary riff on Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shrew" that she describes as a "feminist time-traveling political farce." Among other roles, they play George Washington and other Founding Fathers, in their wigs and white stockings, "in drag," as the playwright puts it.
New Plays Join the Fight for Equal Rights
Huffington Post
Gay Americans have given a tremendous amount of time and talent to the American Theatre. On Monday, June 11th, American Theatre gives back in San Francisco.
Six all-new, short plays premiere as part of the Marriage Equality Plays in a night benefiting AFER, Americans Foundation for Equal Rights.
Tom Bruett, the creator and organizer of the event, asked six playwrights, three directors, 18 actors, SF’s premier improv troupe BATS, and supportive businesses J-Lohr Vineyards and Bi-Rite Market to donate their time and voices in a critical season for equal rights. Political leaders Dennis Herrera, City Attorney of San Francisco, and Supervisors Mark Farrell and Scott Wiener will also be in attendance.
Theater’s Audiences Are Mostly Female: Why Not the Roles?
Huffington Post
It appears that in many major theaters across the country, men’s roles out number women’s by half. One out of every three roles go to women. (An informal survey of 10 theatrical seasons from across the country that I did put women in only 35% of the total roles). This means that men’s stories out number women’s by the same amount.
How Theater for Young People Could Save the World
Huffington Post
March 20th is World Theater for Children and Young People Day. Some of you might be thinking, “Oh lord, why do we need a day to celebrate actors being silly, wearing bright colors and singing obnoxiously at squirming kiddos and bored parents?”
But if you think that’s what Theatre for Young People is, you’re missing out on truly powerful, hilarious, bold, engaging, surprising theater that might just save the world.
A Thinking Girl’s Guide to Taming of the Shrew
Huffington Post
Without hesitation I can say that CalShakes' Production of The Taming of the Shrew (running now through Oct 16th) is a lovely, funny, smartly directed production performed with muscle and wit. Director Shana Cooper dreamed up a Miami Vice version of Padua that was equal parts Hustler Club, Jersey Shore and Malibu Barbie (complete with Alexandra Henrikson‘s Bianca as Barbie herself). I don’t know exactly why every single thing Danny Sheie said as Gremio made me giggle but it did. It was a seamy treat, and the Thursday night audience I was with just loved it.
