Science & Society Program at The Aspen Institute
Lauren has been honored with a place on the Science & Society Program Advisory Council at The Aspen Institute. The program’s mission is to generate greater public appreciation for science as a vital tool to address global challenges, as well as foster a diverse scientific workforce whose contributions extend beyond the laboratory.
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.
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.
