Wow. Funny. Fast. Devastating. Powerful. Thank you for this.

Wow! This seemingly humorous play turns in a dramatic moment and then storms to its powerful, inevitable ending that will leave us speechless yet unable to forget our heroine’s final haunting line. Incredible.

Thank you for this.  Took my breath away. 

Wow.. just wow.  Just the creative input I needed with theaters shuttered already far too long... hope to see this staged sooner rather than later..!

Wow.  Wonderful. Surprising and striking! Thank you!

This is so well done! I need to listen to it a couple of more times for all the conflict layering you have going on. I also enjoy your virtual classes right now. You provide a lot of inspiration for a first-time playwright. Thank you.

WDCB's Gary Zidek talks to the Dueling Critics, Kelly Kleiman and Jonathan Abarbanel, about Redtwist Theatre's production of "I and You".

The Arts Section: The Dueling Critics Tell You & I About "I and You"

The soaring, syncopated, heart breaking rock ballad at the end of Ada and the Engine, composed and written by The Kilbanes and sung by the original cast of Kat Zdan, Josh Schell and Kevin Clarke. 

The song brings together Ada Lovelace her father Lord Byron and her soulmate Charles Babbage in a dreamscape of math, music, love and wonder.

More from The Kilbanes at Kilbanes.com

More about the play at adaplay.tumblr.com
or 
LaurenGunderson.com

Ada And The Memory Engine demo

Ada's Vision - By The Kilbanes - from the play ADA AND THE ENGINE

Shakespeare is famous today thanks in no small part to two members of his acting company, John Heminge and Henry Condell, who published a collection of his plays seven years after his death. Lauren Gunderson has written a new play called "The Book of Will" that portrays Heminge and Condell, along with their families and everyone involved in gathering and creating the First Folio.

From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published April 4, 2017. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode, “You That Survive, And You That Sleep In Fame,” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster and Esther Ferington. Esther French is the web producer. We had help from Melissa Marquis at NPR in Washington and Monty Carlos at KQED in San Francisco.

The Book of Will

Full context and poem text: https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/04/27/janna-levin-reads-planetarium-by-adrienne-rich/

Recorded at "The Universe in Verse," April 24, 2017.

Photograph of Janna Levin by Molly Walsh / Academy of American Poets

POEM TEXT / CONTEXT

Astrophysicist Janna Levin reads "Planetarium" by Adrienne Rich

This fast, funny, and ultimately harrowing new play starts as a brassy comedy and gradually becomes an American reckoning. Angela is stuck in her basement riding out a  tornado warning in her area. With feisty opinions, trenchant memories, and loads of secrets revealed, our protagonist confronts the reality of what's outside her door. Based on Hamlet's "to be or not to be" speech, Natural Shocks turns the audience toward an unlikely hero. Angela is proved to be both liar and heroine, lover and survivor, sinner and saint.  Read by the play's author, this is a unique chance to hear the play as the writer hears it... and to wait for the storm. 

"To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them: to die, to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep, to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That Flesh is heir to?... " - HAMLET

Sound Design and Editing by Kevin Dusablon
Stage Directions by Kat Zdan
Photo by Bryan Derballa

Thank you to Dramatists Play Service. Find the script and inquire about rights there: https://www.dramatists.com/cgi-bin/db/single.asp?key=5975 

Thank you to the Mellon Foundation Playwrights in Residency Program that supported the making of this play. 

Donations to *Marin Theatre Company* encouraged https://www.marintheatre.org/donate/donate-now 

Donations also encouraged to the many organizations fighting gun violence and domestic abuse in America and around the world that include:
*Mom's Demand Action* - https://momsdemandaction.org/ 
*National Domestic Violence Hotline* - https://www.thehotline.org/donate/

Natural Shocks - A One Woman Play in a Tornado by Lauren Gunderson

Lauren Gunderson

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