Lauren M. Gunderson at Marin Theatre Company
Playwright
Lauren has been one of the most produced playwrights in America since 2015 topping the list twice including 2019/20. She is a two-time winner of the Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award for I and You and The Book of Will, the winner of the Lanford Wilson Award and the Otis Guernsey New Voices Award, a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and John Gassner Award for Playwriting, and a recipient of the Mellon Foundation’s Residency with Marin Theatre Company. She studied Southern Literature and Drama at Emory University, and Dramatic Writing at NYU’s Tisch School where she was a Reynolds Fellow in Social Entrepreneurship. She co-authored the Miss Bennet plays with Margot Melcon, and her play The Half-Life of Marie Curie is available on Audible.com. Her work is published at Playscripts (I and You; Exit Pursued By A Bear; The Taming and Toil And Trouble), Dramatists Play Service (The Revolutionists; The Book of Will; Silent Sky; Bauer, Natural Shocks, The Wickhams and Miss Bennet) and Samuel French (Emilie). Her picture book Dr Wonderful: Blast Off to the Moon is available from Two Lions/Amazon. She is currently developing musicals with Ari Afsar, Dave Stewart and Joss Stone. LaurenGunderson.com
Theatre
Marin Theatre Company produces world-class theater for the Marin County and Bay Area communities.We strive to set a national standard for intimate theater experiences of the highest quality, featuring provocative plays by passionate playwrights.We pursue a dialogue with our community that addresses our national and local concerns and interests and assists us in finding a new understanding of our lives.We create future artists and arts patrons through innovative programs for youth.
Residency Activity
In her residency at Marin Theatre Company Lauren has been developing and premiering new plays as well as teaching and performing. Her new play co-written with Margot Melcon, The Wickhams, will premiere this fall at MTC after the companion play, Miss Bennet, premiered there last year. Lauren has been developing a new play, Trojan Women ATL, as well as a new untitled feminist epic in a writer's lab that gathers a cohort of actors regularly to workshop her new plays. She has worked with a local preschool to outline a new Theatre for the Very Young play called The Bear Went Where? and performed her new play Natural Shocks for two nights of fundraising performances to raise money for gun violence prevention as part of a national weekend of readings (more at NaturalShocks.com). She has taught playwriting classes in house but broadcast them for free on HowlRound and facebook live. She has also been exploring ways that parents in the theatre can virtually participate in rehearsals even if they can't be in the rehearsal room and is collecting digital options for fellow writers. Away from MTC Lauren has premiered The Book of Will (recent winner of the Steinberg ATCA Award 2018) at Denver Center and subsequently across the country including Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
How has this residency changed the theatre, and how has this residency changed the playwright? — March 2018
