Lauren Gunderson News

Peninsula Players Theatre, America's Oldest Professional Resident Summer Theatre and Door County's theatrical icon, is thrilled to announce the artistic company for its 84th season, running June 18 through October 20, 2019.  Nestled along Door County, Wisconsin's scenic shore, the award-winning acting company of Peninsula Players has been enthralling generations of audiences in its 600-plus seat, all-weather pavilion, since 1935, presenting hundreds of pre-Broadway tryouts, world premieres, classic dramas, comedies and musicals.

New Hampshire Theatre Project has received a generous donation of $3,525 from Bob's Clam Hut in Kittery, Maine. At Bob's, excess change is collected from guests at the time of food ordering and payment. Instead of staff receiving these as tips, guests are told that Bob's will be donating to a specific charity. New Hampshire Theatre Project is proud to be the spring recipient.

New Hampshire Theatre Project teams up with Glass Dove Productions for the final MainStage show in its 30th Anniversary Season. Ada and Engine portrays the poignant story of Ada Byron Lovelace, daughter of the notorious Lord Byron and creator of the first computer program. Jane Austen meets Steve Jobs in this music-laced story of love, friendship and visionary dreams of the future, a poignant pre-tech romance heralding the computer age.

Boston director Shana Gozansky will direct The Wickhams: Christmas at Pemberley, and Chicago director Jessica Hutchinson will helm the world premiere of The Lowell Offering for Merrimack Repertory Theatre's 2019-20 Season. The pair replace former Artistic Director Sean Daniels as director of these plays.

Arizona Theatre Company Artistic Director Sean Daniels' play about his unusual path to sobriety, The White Chip, a co-production with 2014 Broadway Global Producer of the Year Tom Kirdahy (Hadestown, Frankie & Johnnie in the Clare Du Lune, Anastasia) will be on stage Off Broadway at 59E59 Theaters in New York City from Oct. 4-26.

WSC Avant Bard's Script in Play Festival, started in 2016, has been an opportunity to test out shows for full production treatment through the guise of a series of staged readings and post-play discussions. Written and performed by rising professional talent, these readings have led to some memorable productions, including new versions of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew and Twelfth Night and Lauren Gunderson's hit Emilie: La Marquise Du Chatelet Defends Her Life Tonight. In 2017, a reading of playwright Matt Minnicino's 'distillation' - not 'adaptation,' as we get into below - of Moliere's The Misanthrope was performed. Written entirely in rhyming couplets, it follows a professional cynic who falls in love with an ingenue, and finds his devotion to insincerity tested. Now, it's the capper of Avant Bard's 29th season. I spoke to Minnicino about his career thus far, the adaptation process, and why audiences should be excited for this show.

The French Revolution and comedy don't typically go together, but Lauren Gunderson upends many conventions in THE REVOLUTIONISTS, a fast-paced, feminist comedy set during France's 1793 Reign of Terror, now playing at ARTISTS REP.

Arizona Theatre Company is holding general season auditions for equity actors for the 2019/2020 Season in Phoenix from 12-4:30 p.m. and 6-9 p.m. on Monday, June 3 in the Kax black-box theatre at the Herberger Theater Center, 222 E. Monroe.

Santa Monica Repertory Theater presents #hysteria, a weekend festival of play readings, written and directed by women, including a post-show conversation with the director, cast, and audience after each reading, June 7 - 9, 2019.

In this smart, dark revenge comedy, Nan Carter wants to leave her abusive husband Kyle leave him tied up in a hunting cabin, covered with honey, and ready for bear.

Theatre Pro Rata's 2019-20 season will include two world premieres by local playwrights and a production in collaboration with the Bell Museum that will be presented in the Whitney and Elizabeth MacMillan Planetarium.

Playwrights Foundation announces that Artistic Director Amy Mueller has decided to step down, after nearly two decades of leadership, following the annual Bay Area Playwrights Festival, July 19-28, 2019. A national search for her successor will begin in May.

The Long Beach Playhouse opens its 2019 season with Lauren Gunderson's play entitled Exit, Pursued by a Bear. In the play Nan is trapped in an unhappy marriage with a man named Kyle. A fan of Shakespeare, she and her best friend, Simon, along with a stripper named Sweetheart, decide recreating dramatic reenactments of their marriage might help husband Kyle see the error of his ways.

Artistic Director Mathew Wright today announced AGENTS OF CHANGE, ArtsWest's 2019-20 Season, with six productions - featuring plays by Tony and Nobel Prize-winning playwrights, a boldly reimagined classic, and a world premiere from local luminary Sara Porkalob - all centered on revolutions, and the people who create, fuel and represent them.

The Artistic Home Ensemble today announced the cast for its final production of the 2018-19 season - the Chicago premiere of Lauren Gunderson's ADA AND THE ENGINE, which was given its world premiere by Central Works Theater Company of Berkeley, California in 2015. ADA AND THE ENGINE is an historical drama about Ada, the daughter of the poet Lord Byron, and Ada's friend and soul-mate, Charles Babbage, inventor of the first mechanical computer.

Capital Stage announces its 15th Anniversary Season entitled GOING HOME. This landmark season will be the 4th season at the helm of Producing Artistic Director, Michael Stevenson.

Main Street Theater (MST) announces its 44th Season which includes six productions on the MainStage and six at its Theater for Youth for 2019-2020. 

Theatrical Outfit, Atlanta's second-oldest professional theatre, proudly announces its 2019-2020 Season, which also marks the final season under the leadership of Artistic Director Tom Key. The season promises to be a powerful representation of the kind of work Key loves to produce at the theatre's home in the heart of downtown Atlanta:

"This may be the first time in our 33 years," stated Human Race Artistic Director and Founding Member Kevin Moore, "that we selected a season theme before we selected our shows." And for good reason. The 2019-20 Human Race Theatre season at the Loft Theatre coincides with the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, the first step in all women having the right to vote and the catalyst for our movements for Equality.

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts hosts more than 120 outstanding theater students from colleges and universities across the nation as part of the 50th annual Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival (KCACTF), which runs April 16-20, 2019 in multiple locations throughout the Center. The Center also announced the national awardees for the KCACTF. Selected awardees and representatives will be brought to Washington, D.C. for an expense-paid trip to participate in the National Festival. These student artists from across the United States have been recognized for their outstanding work from the eight regional festivals that were held January 8 through February 28, 2019.