Playwright Lauren Gunderson Takes Action
An Offer We Cannot Refuse
By: Lauren Gunderson - Nov 15, 2016
According to the New York Times annual list Lauren Gunderson is among the most produced American playwrights. She won the Steinberg Award and was keynote speaker at the meeting of American Theatre Critics Association during the annual Humana Festival in Louisville several years ago.
This past summer her play The Taming was presented at Shakespeare & Company.
In the message below she is offering it free for readings by theatre companies on Inauguration Day when America gets Trumped.
I believe that stories well told can accomplish the magical feat of transporting us into the hearts and minds of others. Stories offers us the superpowers of empathy, understanding, connection across experience, and the amplification of often silenced voices. Stories also remind us of the power of joy, hope, and humor in the face of division and conflict. And stories can fire us up for the work of fighting the good fight. Theatre specifically requires us to show up and participate in the story and feel the particular power of congregation as well as catharsis. The communal embrace of theatre was always an ancient way of processing politics, society, and great change. I believe it still is.
This was obviously supposed to be a normal update on upcoming productions and premieres. But I find myself needing a reminder about why theatre and story matters at all. I hope you can join me and these excellent companies for new stories (and a picture book) that offer us versions of the human experience designed to give us heroes and heroines that think, love, work together and demand a better world built on strength of heart.
Any theatre company, group, or person who wants to do a reading of my feminist political comedy, The Taming, on Inauguration Day 2017 can do so for free, with thanks to Playscripts.
Read the play for free online here. Place an order for the rights and select an "offline" form of payment (check or purchase order). Then email info@playscripts.com and tell them that your reading is a part of the Inauguration Day project and you will not be charged.
Send or post a picture of your reading and tag #TameTrump