Ever wanted to be a playwright? Amid coronavirus, big names offer to teach you
Los Angeles Times
Lauren Gunderson rubbed her hands together in excitement. “We’re about to get this playwriting class started,” said the prolific playwright, wearing her signature vibrant eyeglasses and a Shakespeare Theatre Company sweatshirt. She then spoke to her students for nearly an hour about shaping a story’s beginning and ending, crafting character-defining choices and penning effective stage directions. Because of the coronavirus outbreak, the session Wednesday was no ordinary class. Rather, Gunderson led these lessons virtually and for free from her home in San Francisco, a region ordered to shelter in place.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
