Lauren Gunderson | |
---|---|
Born | Atlanta, Georgia | February 2, 1982
Education | Emory University (BA) New York University (MFA) |
Occupation | Playwright |
Notable work | Silent Sky Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley I and You |
Website | http://laurengunderson.com/ |
Lauren Gunderson (born February 5, 1982) is an American playwright, screenwriter, and short story author, born in Atlanta. She lives in San Francisco, where she teaches playwriting. [1] Gunderson was recognized by American Theatre magazine as America's most produced living playwright at Theatre Communications Group (TCG, the magazine's publisher) member theaters in 2017, [2] and again in 2019–20. [3]
Gunderson earned her Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing from Emory University in 2004, and her Master of Fine Arts in Dramatic Writing from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in 2009, where she was also a Reynolds Fellow in Social Entrepreneurship. [4] [5]
She is married to virologist Nathan Wolfe and has 2 sons. [6]
Lauren Gunderson's works heavily focus on female figures in history, science, and literature. [7] She is one of the top 20 most-produced playwrights in the country, [8] and has been America's most produced living playwright since 2016. [9] [10] She has had over twenty plays produced including, I and You, Émilie: La Marquise Du Châtelet Defends Her Life Tonight,Parts They Call Deep, and Background.
I and You was the winner of the 2014 Harold and Mimi Steinberg/American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award, [11] and a finalist for the 2014 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. [12] I and You was produced at Hampstead Theatre in 2018 and starred Game of Thrones actress Maisie Williams. [13] Gunderson was awarded the Lanford Wilson award from Dramatists Play Service in 2016. [14]
Émilie: La Marquise Du Châtelet Defends Her Life Tonight, about the real-life 18th-century physicist Émilie du Châtelet, was commissioned and developed at South Coast Repertory as part of their 2008 Pacific Playwrights Festival directed by Kate Whorisky. It was produced the following year directed by David Emmes. On 25 January 2011, it opened in West Seattle, at Arts West Theater. It is published by Samuel French, Inc. (2010). [15] Émilie received its European and British premiere in Oxford, UK during February 2014. [16]
Parts They Call Deep won the 2002 Young Playwrights National Playwriting Competition and was produced Off-Broadway by Young Playwrights Inc. as part of the Young Playwrights Festival at the Cherry Lane Theater. "Parts They Call Deep" and Background won her the Essential Theatre Prize in 2000 and 2004. [17] Background, about physicist Ralph Alpher, was published by Isotope: A Literary Journal of Nature and Science Writing (2009, issue 7.2). [18]
Gunderson wrote the book to the musical We Won't Sleep, about U.S. Rep. Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to Congress. The music and lyrics were written by Arianna Afsar. Under the title Jeannette, it was part of the 2019 summer series at the National Music Theater Conference at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Connecticut. We Won't Sleep is scheduled to have its world premiere at the Tony Award-winning Signature Theatre in Arlington, Virginia in 2022. [19]
Gunderson has made some of her plays available for activist purposes, [20] and is touted as an Arts meets Activism writer. [1]
The Taming is an all-female political farce which premiered at Crowded Fire Theater Company in 2013. [21] Inspired by Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew , The Taming explores what happens when a beauty queen with a constitutional law degree, a Republican senator's aide, and a liberal online influencer are all locked in a hotel together, trying to make a better America. Gunderson made this play free to produce on the night of the 2017 presidential inauguration of Donald Trump, citing her belief that theater, art, and stories have the ability to make lasting change. [22]
In April 2018, Gunderson created a national campaign of theater activism with royalty-free readings of her play Natural Shocks to address domestic violence and gun violence against women. [23] Theaters across the U.S. participated in these readings including, The Know Theatre and Cincinnati Shakespeare Company. [24]
In both instances, Gunderson stipulated that all proceeds from the productions be given to charitable causes. [22] [24]
Gabrielle Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise du Châtelet was a French natural philosopher and mathematician from the early 1730s until her death due to complications during childbirth in 1749.
The Pacific Playwrights Festival (PPF), a national forum for playwrights and theatre leaders, is dedicated to developing and producing new American plays. It is held every summer at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, California.
Sheila Callaghan is a playwright and screenwriter who emerged from the RAT movement of the 1990s. She has been profiled by American Theater Magazine, "The Brooklyn Rail", Theatermania, and The Village Voice. Her work has been published in American Theatre magazine.
Theatre Pro Rata is a small, professional theatre company operating in the Twin Cities, United States. The company's name is derived from the term pro rata, which comes from the Latin for "in proportion." Their mission: To each of us: a foundation in the play, a pursuit of creative excellence, and a continuation of curiosity.
Lisa Loomer is an American playwright and screenwriter who has also worked as an actress and stand-up comic. She is best known for her play The Waiting Room (1994), in which three women from different time periods meet in a modern doctor's waiting room, each suffering from the effects of their various societies' cosmetic body modification practices. She also co-wrote the screenplay for the film Girl Interrupted. Many of her plays deal with the experiences of Latinas and immigrant characters. Others deal with social and political issues through the lens of contemporary family life. Beyond that, Loomer's play The Waiting Room discusses issues such as body image, breast cancer, and non-Western medicine.
Annie Baker is an American playwright and teacher who won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for her play The Flick. Among her works are the Shirley, Vermont plays, which take place in the fictional town of Shirley: Circle Mirror Transformation, Nocturama, Body Awareness, and The Aliens. She was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2017.
Arianna Ayesha "Ari" Afsar is an American singer, composer, beauty queen and activist best known for her starring role in Hamilton, as the songwriter of the musical Jeannette, and as a top contestant on American Idol.
Sybille Pearson is a playwright, musical theatre lyricist and librettist.
Rachel Chavkin is an American stage director best known for directing the musicals Natasha, Pierre, & The Great Comet of 1812 and Hadestown, receiving nominations for a Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical for both and winning for Hadestown in 2019.
The American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA) is the only nationwide professional association of theatre critics in the United States. The ATCA membership consists of theatre critics who write reviews and critiques of live theatre for print, broadcast, and digital media. The organization is best known for its annual Steinberg/ATCA New play Award recognizing work developed and premiered in regional theaters. It also makes the recommendation for the Regional Theatre Tony Award. ATCA is an affiliate organization of the International Association of Theatre Critics. The current chair of ATCA's executive committee is David John Chávez, a San Francisco-based theatre critic. The vice chair is Cameron Kelsall, a freelance theatre critic in Philadelphia.
Martín Zimmerman is an American bilingual playwright.
Avant Bard Theatre is a small, professional, nonprofit theater based in Arlington, VA. The company was founded in 1990 under the name Washington Shakespeare Company; its name was changed to WSC Avant Bard in August 2011; its name was subsequently changed to Avant Bard Theatre in October 2017. Avant Bard focuses on producing "bold and experimental productions of classic and contemporary works".
Lucas Hnath is an American playwright. He won the 2016 Obie Award for excellence in playwriting for his plays Red Speedo and The Christians. He also won a Whiting Award.
The Kilroys' List is a gender parity initiative to end the "systematic underrepresentation of female and trans playwrights" in the American theater industry. Gender disparity is defined as the gap of unproduced playwrights' whose plays are being discriminated against based on the writer's gender identification and intersectional identities of race, sexual orientation, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, age, and ability. Recent statistical research released in November 2015, entitled The Count, gathered that 22% of total surveyed professional productions from 2011-2013 annual seasons were written by women playwrights, 3.8% of the total were written by women playwrights of color, and 0.4% of the total were written by foreign women playwrights of color. 78% of total surveyed professional productions were written by men playwrights.
Lauren Yee is an American playwright.
Larissa FastHorse is a Native American playwright and choreographer based in Santa Monica, California. FastHorse grew up in Minnesota, where she began her career as a ballet dancer and choreographer but was forced into an early retirement after ten years of dancing due to an injury. Returning to an early interest in writing, she became involved in Native American drama, especially the Native American film community. Later she began writing and directing her own plays, several of which are published through Samuel French and Dramatic Publishing. With playwright and performer Ty Defoe, FastHorse co-founded Indigenous Direction, a "consulting firm that helps organizations and individuals who want to create accurate work by, for and with Indigenous peoples." Indigenous Direction's clients include the Guthrie Theater. FastHorse is a past vice chair of the Theatre Communications Group, a service organization for professional non-profit American theatre.
Dominique Morisseau is an American playwright and actress from Detroit, Michigan. She has written more than nine plays, three of which are part of a cycle titled The Detroit Project. She received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2018.
Legacy of Light is a play by Karen Zacarias that explores the similarities and differences between the lives of women scientists in the 1700s and the present day. Karen Zacarias is a playwright-in-residence for the Arena Stage in Washington D.C., where her contemporary comedy premiered on May 8, 2009. Legacy of Light shows two different worlds and the themes that connect them, including the properties of love and light, motherhood, and career vs family. Along with connecting two different time periods, Karen has connect two different types of characters. The play features an ensemble of six characters that include two historical figures: Emilie du Châtelet and Voltaire.
Kate Hamill is an American actress and playwright.
Hansol Jung is a South Korean translator and playwright. Jung is a recipient the Whiting Award in drama and three of her plays were listed on the 2015 Kilroys' List. Jung is a member of the Ma-Yi Theater Writers' Lab and was a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University. In addition to writing several plays, Jung has also written for the television series Tales Of the City.
{{cite news}}
: |last=
has generic name (help){{cite web}}
: |last=
has generic name (help)