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.
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 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.
