Lauren Gunderson on the Women of Hamlet

What if Gertrude had more power than we thought? What if Ophelia’s fate wasn’t sealed from the start? And what does it really mean to mother a prince who might be losing his mind?

Playwright Lauren Gunderson, one of the most produced living playwrights in America, takes on Hamlet in her latest play, A Room in the Castle. This sharp, feminist reimagining follows Ophelia, her handmaid, and Queen Gertrude as they navigate the dangers of Elsinore, wrestling with the weight of survival, duty, and defiant hope in the face of chaos.

Gunderson, known for her witty and powerful storytelling in The Book of Will and The Half-Life of Marie Curie, discusses how she reclaims the voices of Hamlet‘s women, why Gertrude’s famous speech about Ophelia’s drowning might not be as simple as it seems, and how she crafted new ending that brings new light to Shakespeare’s most famous tragedy.

>> Get your tickets to Folger Theatre’s A Room in the Castle, a co-production with Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, on stage March 4 – April 6

Listen to Shakespeare Unlimited on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, Spotify, Soundcloud, or your favorite podcast platform.

Lauren M. Gunderson has been one of the most produced playwrights in America since 2015, topping the list thrice including 2022-23. 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 a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. She is a playwright, screenwriter, musical book writer, and children’s author who lives in San Francisco. She graduated from NYU Tisch as a Reynolds Fellow in Social Entrepreneurship.

From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published February 25, 2025. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the executive producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. We had help with web production from Paola García Acuña. Leonor Fernandez edits our transcripts. Final mixing services are provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

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Shakespeare’s Narrative Poems 

FARAH KARIM-COOPER: From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited. I’m Farah Karim-Cooper, the Folger director.

[Music post and fade]

KARIM-COOPER: The playwright Lauren Gunderson has become a favorite of theater audiences around the country for her funny, feminist historical plays like The Half-Life of Marie Curie and Ada and the Engine, about the mathematician Ada Lovelace.

She’s also penned a trilogy of plays based on the characters from Pride and Prejudice, and a play about the making of the First Folio, The Book of Will.

But those are only a handful of Gunderson’s two dozen plays. She frequently tops the list of the most produced living playwrights in America.

Now, she’s written a new play about the women of Hamlet, called A Room in the Castle. In it, Gertrude, Ophelia, and a nurse character Gunderson invented named Anna find strength in one another while Shakespeare’s tragedy rages offstage.

A Room in the Castle was part of Folger Theatre’s first Reading Room Festival in 2023. A full production of the play, co-produced with Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, returns to the Folger beginning March 4th.

Gunderson will be familiar to longtime listeners—she came on the show to talk about her play The Book of Will back in 2017. Here’s Lauren Gunderson, in conversation with Barbara Bogaev.

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BARBARA BOGAEV: Do you read Shakespeare or watch the plays and find yourself yelling at the page, you know, or the stage? The way people do when they watch TV news.

LAUREN GUNDERSON: Oh my gosh. All the time. All the time. I am a very interactive audience member for all things Shakespeare.

BOGAEV: I’m relieved to hear that because that’s what I thought when I heard about this new play even before I read it. I just… it just felt like it was you shouting back at the stage.

GUNDERSON: It is indeed. Lovingly, of course. I do not care about things I don’t love deeply. So, engaging with Shakespeare sometimes feels like challenging Shakespeare. And that’s sort of what I’ve done my entire career, both as an audience member but also as a writer.

BOGAEV: So, what are you shouting back at the most? And I guess the related—the kind of… the obverse of that is when you watch Hamlet, whose eyes are you experiencing it through? Do you see it—what’s going on through Ophelia’s eyes, or Gertrude’s, or do you switch it up?

GUNDERSON: Well, so, the origin story of this play is me trying to understand and perhaps try to find a way to save Ophelia. But through the writing of it and the reinvestigation of one of my favorite plays—it’s a play I teach all the time, and I talk about it all the time. I have seen so many productions and been in productions as a younger actor.

And so, I am very versed in Hamlet. And so, I came away feeling so curious and frankly a little pissed off about Ophelia’s trajectory. Specifically looking at the distance she goes into madness, from when we leave her to when she starts that, sort of, descension into her insanity. And leading to the suicide.

Then as I was writing the play and understanding, of course, you come to Gertrude’s speech about Ophelia’s drowning. It is so detailed, and it is so long. And it is so beautifully articulated that it felt fake. It felt not something that a human would absorb all of those details in that capacity, only to have done nothing in the actual moment.

BOGAEV: That’s so interesting. Like when people lie, they add too many details.

GUNDERSON: Exactly. It felt too perfect of a speech, which is both a compliment to Shakespeare and a little tiny door into perhaps a whole other side of what might be happening.

And so once I allowed myself to say, “All right, we’re going to mess with Hamlet. And two, we’re going to mess with it to the end of how could we rearrange Ophelia’s story and give her a new ending and a way out.”

And so that led me into trying to understand what Gertrude would have done? And why would that lie have occurred? And what else would be happening. And who the heck is she, and why would she have Ophelia’s side like that? What else is going on?

And so suddenly, I spent this time wanting to write about Ophelia but ended up really investigating Gertrude. And I’m so happy I did because I found a woman that I am deeply impressed with, also have lots of questions about and want to know more of.

BOGAEV: Well, that’s it. I mean, Gertrude is really challenging to get a grip on. You have all these questions. Was she always in love with Claudius? Did she know Claudius killed her husband, the king? Was she not in love with him at all? Was it a practical survival arrangement she arrived at, you know? And what kind of mother was she anyway to have Hamlet be the way he is.

GUNDERSON: Yeah, well, exactly. It became a play about motherhood; about mothering someone who does not want to be mothered, that has changed so much from the young boy that she raised in some capacity. And it really allowed me to play some thought experiments out. Which I think every play is a grand thought experiment, from the writer through the creative co-creatives to the audience.

But certainly, the thought experiment allowed me to say, “Well, what is it to be the mother of a mad man? What is it to be… to love someone unconditionally as mothers usually do to somebody who, well, they’re pressing on that definition of unconditional? He’s right at the limit of, there might be a condition after you’ve murdered your fifth, sixth person. The extension of my love and respect.”

But, like, what kind of woman is that? But for me, the most interesting is I find that a woman who has been in power that long, having married one king and now married another, she is way smarter than anyone in this play or in the country of Denmark is aware. I know that she is playing games and three-dimensional chess that is beyond what anyone thinks she is capable of.

So of course Hamlet thinks that she is lewd and lusty and acting in haste. She is not in my play. She is calculated, and strategic, and frankly she’s doing it to save his life. And we only come to know that through her confessing her plans to the other women in the play, which there are none except for Ophelia and the one I made up.

BOGAEV: Well, that is the lingering question. You know, why does Gertrude marry her brother-in-law so fast? And you do, as you say, you lay it out. It was the… she admits it’s the only way to stay safe after the king dies, and it’s the only way to protect Hamlet. But just to close that loop for us historically, was that often the case in the late Middle Ages when Hamlet ostensibly takes place?

GUNDERSON: Yeah, I think there are many examples of that. And there also is some scholarship about why wasn’t she queen? Or why wasn’t Hamlet king? Why Claudius of all people to take the throne? And it must have been because of a military threat. Some sort of pressure that he was exerting on the crown and the people in charge beyond Gertrude and Prince Hamlet.

So it is, to me, something that already there are threats and people coming for her power and her son’s power. So, of course, she would do whatever she has to. So, I really delighted in that research and the sort of interrogation of this fiction. And meeting it with what history might have let us know about how power transferred at that time.

But, you know, the play is really a play that investigates the cost of vengeance and violence. Particularly male vengeance and violence on the people around them, largely the women. So, what is happening? You know, Shakespeare wants us to follow Hamlet, to empathize with Hamlet. That’s why we have so many soliloquies and windows into his mind and his justification and his logic. That’s why the play is so damn good.

But it doesn’t let us see the logic and the reaction and the response of all the people that are dealing with the wake of his actions and his many strategies and many plans. And so, to focus on this one room where these women can speak freely, where they can speak to each other, where they can not put on the show they have to put on for the men in power. We can get to the heart of what is going on for all the people around them.

What is it like to live with those strategies hitting you, like angry waves again and again? How do you survive that? How do you find resilience? How do you look around and say, “Well, at least these two other women understand what I’m going through. So, we are the small but mighty team against this storm of violence that is coming against us, the rottenness of the state of Denmark.” They’re just trying to survive it.

And so, my play says, “Well, let’s just say that they do in some capacity. We’ll see if that’s all of them, or some of them, or none of them by the end of the play.” But it is the truth of so many women in so many situations and so many moments of chaos and political turmoil.

BOGAEV: Right? “How do we survive?”

GUNDERSON: They are often not spoken on. Exactly. “How do we survive?”

BOGAEV: And your Gertrude, one of the fallouts for her, as it is for many women, is—many mothers—is, “Am I at fault?” “Is it my fault that Hamlet is the way he is?” And she admits these fears about Hamlet to Ophelia.

This part reminded me just right away of that book that was made into a movie of the same name, We Have to Talk About Kevin. That just tremendous weight of mother guilt, you know? “Was my son born a monster or did I make him into one?”

[00:10:00] GUNDERSON: Yeah, did she make her son a monster? Is she responsible for her husband’s death? Is she responsible for the rottenness of the whole kingdom? I mean, these are things that women are often blamed   for, way beyond their sphere of influence. But the play really starts to wrestle with—and have Gertrude wrestle with this truth about her.

And the truth is that there is, for a mother, very little that a son could do that would drive you truly away from them. So, in the end, the play is about, can she choose herself over Hamlet? Can she admit any part of the faults? And even if there is no faults of her own in his actions, she still is the mother who can’t look away from her son in pain and rage, in the consequence of his own violence.

So that is something sort of dark and true and curious, and it made me really want to understand who that woman is. So, in part, what that means strategically about, for my playwright brain is, well, how do we see her choose him in spite of his flaws and failures?

And that is, we play the final scene not as an accident that she drinks the poison, but she is intentionally aware of what she is walking into. And chooses to be in that final scene with him, as opposed to letting him suffer on his own.

BOGAEV: Which I’ve seen often directors make that choice.

GUNDERSON: Yes, exactly.

BOGAEV: I mean, it’s interesting, you get into such deep rivers here in—if you bring these female characters together. And as I was—I haven’t seen your play, I’ve read the script. So, it’s almost… I kept thinking it’s almost as if Shakespeare—because the focus is on Hamlet—doesn’t allow the main female characters in Hamlet to be in the same room.

As opposed to Romeo and Juliet, in which you really get to know the real Juliet and see her in action and see how witty and brilliant she is in the scenes between her and the nurse.

GUNDERSON: Yes. Exactly.

BOGAEV: So, you’ve added a nurse to your cast here.

GUNDERSON: Indeed.

BOGAEV: Is that why?

GUNDERSON: Stealing from the best. I have stolen so many good ideas from our dear Will. Yes, of course. I mean, but the truth is every one of those young characters, especially, they have some mother figure. And, you know, mothers are a bit scarce in the Shakespearean canon. And the ones that are there are… oof. They’re a lot, including Gertrude.

So, to have this kind of chosen family, or assigned family in the case of nurses and my character Anna, there are people that you have to trust to be honest with and vulnerable with. And Ophelia deserves one.

BOGAEV: Right, a safe space.

GUNDERSON: Exactly. And she does not have one in the play. Her brother has his own motives. Her father does, Hamlet does. So, she doesn’t have anybody in the play that is a true confessor to her. So, I gave her one.

BOGAEV: Right. And clearly, she’s a musician. She doesn’t just noodle around with a guitar. Your Ophelia writes songs. She practices her songs. We first meet her in her private chamber playing a song. That’s how the play begins. So why did you make her an artist?

GUNDERSON: The truth is, it’s because Shakespeare did. She is a singer, and quoting songs throughout the whole play, and talking about the poetry that Hamlet has written for her. And it felt to me most interesting to incorporate that because I wanted the entire play to sort of zipper pretty perfectly with what Shakespeare has.

And to Shakespeare’s credit, he left a lot of room for my version of their events to perhaps occur, you know? The fact that it’s a drowning, and we don’t necessarily see the body and it’s not stated in there. There’s many rooms that Shakespeare sort of built, but didn’t open the door to that. I step, you know, gladly in.

And one of those is this idea that Ophelia is a singer, surely. But of course, that’s what women were taught back then, right? To make the world more beautiful through poetry, through song, through music. They’re given those tasks to sort of decorate the world.

But what if she goes beyond that? There’s a curiosity to her that she wants to write a love song about the boy she loves. And that happens to be Hamlet, until it’s not.

So, I thought that would be a fun way to incorporate something. And we can see much like Shakespeare does, he repurposes those country ballads, right? For kind of sweetly in the beginning, and then more harshly and crudely at the end. And it’s a way to show Ophelia’s change of character. And so, I, you know, again, borrowing from the best, I did the same thing in mine.

BOGAEV: I like how it has layers. I especially love Gertrude’s line to Ophelia, “When in doubt, start singing. Everyone loses it when a woman uses her own voice.”

GUNDERSON: Yes, indeed. There we are. That’s the heart of it, isn’t it?

BOGAEV: Well here, let’s talk about process. Among other things, Ophelia is a very interesting and typical teenager. She’s frustrated. She has agency though. She’s rebellious and she admits to Anna the nurse that she slept with Hamlet twice in the past before his antic-disposition period. So where do backstories come in your process? You know, first you decide on these three women characters, then what do you do?

GUNDERSON: Yeah, I mean, to me, it’s asking and answering some of the questions that are already in the play that scholars like so many people at the Folger have debated for centuries now. Like what did Gertrude know? What did Hamlet and Ophelia? What were they up to before this moment?

BOGAEV: So, do you write them all down? Do you have three by five cards of scenes? What’s the nitty gritty?

GUNDERSON: I don’t, I just have it… I have, sort of, an endless, unstoppable curiosity that has served me. Yeah, so it felt a chance to sort of name the events that are in between the lines. And this whole play is sort of in between the lines, which is where I like to live with Shakespeare.

BOGAEV: It’s in between the lines, but you also intertwine it with the play, the actual Hamlet by William Shakespeare, like twisting vines. You use video projections, like, Act Three, Scene One, Hamlet by Shakespeare. And then your characters react to whatever happens in those scenes or sometimes they read the original lines themselves, just kind of glimpses and bits of scenes.

So tell me more about this. How did you construct that and how did you think about that in the beginning?

GUNDERSON: Yes. Well, I wanted to have the women’s lines, or some of them, in the play. So, what we see and what we hear in Kaja Dunn’s beautiful production is the women and then nothing in the space of what Hamlet would say. So, they sort of give silence. And we have a projection that just says, “Hamlet speaks,” and then they say their lines.

In the murder of Gonzaga scene, you know, we have Ophelia just say, “Ay, sir. Yes, sir. No, sir.” And we kind of get how little there is in terms of that interaction or, for the women themselves. But we also know that—I wanted the audience to know where we were in the play that they have referenced.

So yes, this is our nunnery scene. But to do something like that again and again in the play is just to reach the moment where we break that pattern.

BOGAEV: Something in me loves the idea of saying, “shtum,” to all the male characters. I mean, this is like how to shut down mansplaining.

GUNDERSON: There we go. There we go. “Just shush. No, no, no. My turn. My turn, Will.”

There is also a language in the play that the play is in charge until the characters reclaim that agency. So, the play pushes them forward. And there’s this sort of time warp-y, forceful wind sound that the characters are literally forced, and pushed into the scene, and forced to deliver the lines that are in Shakespeare’s play. Until Ophelia stops it and breaks out and has a soliloquy of her own.

And then even has a soliloquy about soliloquies and says, “Wait, this isn’t fair. He gets to talk to them constantly. He’s talking to them. He’s telling them what he’s feeling and what he’s thinking. I don’t get to do that. That’s not fair. If they knew what I was thinking. if they knew what I was up against and what his actions do to me, they would see the actual truth.”

And her lady’s maid says, “Well, what is true Ophelia?” And she says, “That question that he keeps asking again and again, it’s not even worth asking because the answer is always, ‘To be.’”

So we see her kind of wrestle the story away. That, you know, it is a privilege and a luxury for Hamlet to say, “Well, to be or not to be, let me think about that.” If you are a woman trying to survive in a violent regime, that is not a question you ask. It better be, “To be,” or else we’re not living for another day. So, to help her reclaim it—

BOGAEV: Right. Get real, Hamlet.

GUNDERSON: Yeah, come on, dude. So, it is her stepping into her own power, which of course the whole play of Shakespeare’s is about eroding that power and that sanity. And in my play, it’s sort of the reverse, of gaining power and ever more clarity about what that her life is willing to fight for and to survive for.

BOGAEV: Okay, tell me about, “Obey, agree, assist.” And a spoiler alert, everyone.

GUNDERSON: Yes.

BOGAEV: This is important in the play. But three words. It’s Gertrude’s formula for survival for Ophelia. And it’s also her formula for herself. For marriage, for her life. Are these three words that you have spoken to all throughout your life? Or is this something that came up for this play?

GUNDERSON: Yes. It’s something that’s sort of, you know, sometimes I have a plan for where the plays go and what the characters say. And oftentimes I don’t. I’m, sort of, just as surprised as everyone in the audience when I write them.

And that was one of them where I was sort of surprised that she said that. I wanted her to have a strategy that could then be used, not necessarily against her, but used to expose what the cost of that strategy is and the cost of assistance and complicity with these men means that you’re going to end up throwing other women under the bus or other people.

And so, she says, “Obey, agree, assist,” when Ophelia asks, “How would I be as a queen? What do I do as a wife and a potential queen if I marry the prince?” And she says “Obey, agree, assist.” And then later that comes again as Ophelia starts to deteriorate against Hamlet’s violence and the pressure she’s under. This idea of obey, agree, assist. Obey, agree, assist.

She says it again and again and again until Gertrude and Anna sort of have to say, “We have to get her out of this house, this room, this castle, this play. Or else she’s not going to survive.” And so, then obey, agree, assist becomes a formula for freedom if you are obeying yourself, and you are agreeing with the people you trust, and assisting your own survival.

BOGAEV: Oh, as opposed to the more dangerous, “Disagree, disobey, undermine.”

GUNDERSON: Yes, yes. Which sort of is, that’s what they’re saying.

BOGAEV: Should be my inclination.

GUNDERSON: Exactly.

BOGAEV: But, right. Okay, well, interesting. So, when you say these things come to you while you write, is it that flow state where you hear your character speaking?

GUNDERSON: Yes. Yeah, it is. I do a lot of research and a lot of, sort of, thinking before I start writing. So that when I start, I am already sort of mid flow. I kind of can’t wait to write. And this is pretty much every day. I can’t wait to get to my computer or notepad or frankly—

BOGAEV: Okay, now you’re making me not like you. For real?

GUNDERSON: I get it. I do. I know it’s crazy to say it. I know so many writers who love to have written, but I love that part as well. But I love wrestling with it. It’s the problem solving that I love so much. A play, when I teach and talk about it, I often think of them as people verse problems.

So it is an inherent sense of who are the people, what are they up against? How the hell are they going to save themselves, fix this, get out, fight for the people they love? And that problem is what I get to work on and the puzzle solving of it.

But yes, when I’m getting into the point of dialogue, I actually write in such a… so quickly and in such a flow that I don’t put who’s saying the lines. It’s just the lines. And then I go back and put who’s saying what in.

That helps me keep the writer voice close to what the actors will eventually be saying on stage. If I stop and put the stage directions in and put the character lines in, it slows me down. It slows the rhythm down.

And so much of what I do and love as a playwright is that rhythm. Is this bounce and carbonation of crackly dialogue. And then where that rhythm slams into a pause. And those pauses and beats are usually where the most recognition and revelation happens for a character.

So, you kind of can’t get that gasp and ability to confess what’s really on your mind if you don’t have the speed and the crackle and the pacing before. So, all of that has to work and flow at the same—in the same moment as I’m churning out a scene.

BOGAEV: Well, on a completely different tack, a lot of your plays are about scientists. There’s Marie Curie, Isaac Newton, the astronomer Henrietta Leavitt. And Ada and the Engine about Ada Lovelace. And your last play, The Catastrophist, is about your husband, who’s a virologist, pandemic person. So interesting. So, what is it about science that inspires you so much?

GUNDERSON: Oh, what a lovely question. I love when theater is part of the true story of the world. And when I was a young writer, I found myself writing as one young writers tend to do, about yourself and your life and your relationships. That was the first play.

The second play was about a cosmologist. And the third play was about Isaac Newton. And the fourth play was about Émilie du Châtelet, a physicist during the time of Voltaire.

BOGAEV: So, you got on a roll.

GUNDERSON: I got in a roll. And I got on a roll because I want theater to be about the biggest questions we have as humans. That’s part of how I think theater has evolved, to be a place where we talk about the things we need to talk about as a society grows and changes and evolves itself. And so those stories have to include science, have to include philosophy and the biggest ideas we have.

I love when people come to my plays and want to go investigate, and Google, and read about some of these people in these times. That’s, I think, theater at its best is to remind us who we are. Not take us away from who we are or the world or the history, but to bring us back to those places to say they know something back then and that thing still matters now.

So I love the investigation of science. I also think science is inherently theatrical because it is… there’s a moment, that moment of discovery, that Eureka moment is something that can be staged. We can see in the smallest widening of an eye or the smallest gasp or the largest that a new paradigm has shifted because somebody discovered a thing, or thought of that thing, or connected this thing to that thing. And that to me is one of those dramatic things you can put on stage, is somebody having a revolutionary idea.

So I kind of come back to the stories of science again and again. And as that changed for me from just the stories of science to the stories of largely women in science. It’s frankly… they make way better plays when you’re telling the stories of women. Because there’s so much against us in that field in particular and historical moments.

BOGAEV: So much conflict.

GUNDERSON: So much conflict, so much to prove, so much to struggle against.

So, the characters are inherently doing a lot more than if, you know, a man walks into Harvard in 1900, they say, “Welcome.” If a woman does, they say, “What are you doing here?” And that of course extends to people of color and different abilities and…

BOGAEV: “Welcome,” and shower them with money.

GUNDERSON: Exactly. So, all of the people who aren’t, you know, straight, cis, white men in a lot of these places and times, it is inherently a story of struggle and resilience. And those are the stories I want to see again and again, certainly in this moment in time.

BOGAEV: You know, we have a lot of teachers, and professors, and people in the academy who listen to this podcast. And so, my eyes kind of lit up when I was reading about you. And I read somewhere that a high school physics teacher in Decatur, Georgia, where you’re from, let you write tiny plays instead of lab reports? Is that one of those things that someone made up or is that true?

GUNDERSON: Nope, that is an actual true thing, thank you, Mr. Wintersheet. He was my physics teacher in high school and sort of knew that he had an oddball in his class. And so, I wrote little plays as lab reports. And he gave me all the credits, you know, 10 points for creativity, 10 points for the unique approach. And, you know, like a five on the actual science, but I did what I could.

And it’s true. It’s true. It’s in that class that I remember thinking, “Oh, what I love about science is the people.” And he taught physics with at least a little bit and then more and more about the actual scientist. What is the person and the moment in time? And what was the chemistry, if you’ll pardon the pun, turn that—of that moment and that person in that moment that allowed for this revelation to happen.

So, thanks, Mr. Wintersheet.

BOGAEV: That’s so inspiring. I mean, you know, Mr. Wintersheet. Who knew what would grow there?

GUNDERSON: And I will say Sid, Sid Perkowitz was one of my college professors when I was a freshman at Emory.

BOGAEV: Great name.

GUNDERSON: Yes. And Sid had a class about, kind of, the physics of light. And I took it and I said, “Well, instead of a paper, could I write you a play?” And he agreed, because, like, who says that?

He told me later, he was like, “Who? What sort of student on earth? Okay, sure. Yes. We say yes to those crazy things.” So, he did, but he got so excited about it that he started writing plays. He’s written several. So, it was a really nice… I always thank him for that for that. So, thank you, Dr. Perkowitz, too.

BOGAEV: Oh, that’s fantastic. So where did the Shakespeare come in?

GUNDERSON: Shakespeare’s been with me since I was the youngest creature I can remember. I always wanted to be an actor and I occasionally do now. I have a new two-hander actually, about our dear Will and his wife Anne, that I’m performing the role of Anne in development. But it’s because that acting spirit in me has never really left, even though I largely am a playwright.

But I think that’s part of why I care so much about how the lines flow and the rhythm, because I was a performer and sort of have it in my blood. But I’m a performer because of Shakespeare. Because reading, for some reason, I loved Caesar. I loved Julius Caesar as a kid. And so, I would read those lines.

BOGAEV: As a kid?

GUNDERSON: I know, isn’t that funny? And so, I would read them in my room. And of course, you do your Romeo and Juliet stint, and you do your Midsummer stint. And yes, love those speeches and so much of that as well.

But it came back to wanting to be the best and do the best. And so of course, I was told Shakespeare was the best. So, I said, “Great, well, I will spend my life in conversation and investigation of those plays.” And I’m so glad I have.

But early on as a writer, I started to say, “Well, there’s so much in the plays thematically.” And of course, they’re structurally so genius. and so much to challenge and rub up against and to fight with and struggle with in Shakespeare as well.

And that’s sort of why one of my, sort of, side projects that challenges to myself is to sort of be in conversation with each of the plays in some way. So many of my plays are sort of contemporary reimaginings of some of the themes or transposing the characters to contemporary times.

And then of course, writing about Will and his friends, like in Book of Will. and the kind of the time period is so interesting to me as a playwright. Because they invented modern theater.

BOGAEV: And they were rock stars.

GUNDERSON: They were, and they still are to a lot of people. I love how contentious some of the plays are and how flawed some of them are. And the fact that we have so many shared references as a world because of them. It feels like something that I just will never get tired of.

BOGAEV: I’m sorry, I’m stuck on the image of you as a child reading Cassius.

GUNDERSON: Oh my gosh, there’s so much mystery to it and violence and consequence. And those speeches are so gorgeous. The Antony of it. Oh! So yeah, I’m… I don’t know why. I do—Much Ado is my favorite. I will always go back to Much Ado.

And I just finished a workshop of a play that will be premiering next year called Lady Disdain, which is my Much Ado modernization, where it takes—so I love romance stories. And everything from sort of Pride and Prejudice to modern romantasy. But Much Ado is always my favorite one because it’s still actually funny.

And so I took that play and set it in the world of contemporary romantasy audiobook narrators. So, we have the OG enemies to lovers, romcom of Much Ado. But now it’s set as an enemies to lovers romcom where they are narrating romcoms. They’re narrating romance books.

And so, it’s sort of a play about lovers narrating love stories. And it is a love story, and it’s based on a love story. So, it’s a tremendous, crazy body comedy that is sexy and spirited. And I think Shakespeare would think it’s funny.

BOGAEV: Wow. So, so much to look forward to. You have this Will and Anne play coming out.

GUNDERSON: Yeah, that one’s called Muse of Fire, and it’s just a two-hander. I’ve been wanting to write about them for a long time, partly because I was afraid to write about Shakespeare himself. That felt too much. So, Book of Will—

BOGAEV: Are you kidding me?

GUNDERSON: Not about…

BOGAEV: I mean, you’ve done so much Shakespeare, you’re afraid to write with Shakespeare.

GUNDERSON: Well, you know, you got to write—put words in the mouth of Shakespeare. My goodness, the brazenness, but I guess I am brazen. So here we go.

But to me, it was a play that I could only write now because it’s a two-hander, which are very hard to write.

BOGAEV: Why?

GUNDERSON: Because it is just the two relationships that fuel the entire play. So, it frankly, a two-hander doesn’t work if everyone in the play is behaving properly.

So, you are writing people losing it, and confessing, and having secrets, and lying, and contending. And those are… that’s really intense to write. It’s intense to watch, but it also has to be funny and have that click and that spice.

So, it’s a bit… it’s a challenge. It’s a plan, sort of, afraid of, which means I think I’m doing something right. So, I’m really excited about that one coming up in a bunch of places and ways as we develop it in the next year or so.

BOGAEV: Well, you always get to the juice. I just can’t wait. Thank you so much.

GUNDERSON: Thank you. Thank you.

—————-

KARIM-COOPER: That was Lauren Gunderson, interviewed by Barbara Bogaev.

A Room in the Castle, co-produced with the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, runs at the Folger Theatre from March 4th to April 6th. Tickets and more information at folger.edu.

This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the executive producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. We had technical help from Lusen Mendel in San Francisco, and Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Our web producer is Paola García Acuña. Leonor Fernandez edits our transcripts. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

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