Lauren Gunderson’s favorite act of any play is not the first or the second.  It’s not the midpoint or the climax of the story—in fact, it doesn’t even happen on the stage. “My favorite act of any play is the one where the play is over and the audience gets to talk about it,” Gunderson says. “They’ll turn to their friend or family member and say, ‘what did you think?’ That last act of any play is the audience’s turn to share what’s important and meaningful to them.” Gunderson will get the chance to witness that last act when her play, Lady Disdain, makes its rolling world premiere at Asolo Repertory Theatre this June.

 At 44, Gunderson has established herself as one of the most prominent voices in American theater. She is one of, if not the, most produced playwrights in the nation, with 30-plus works to her name since the debut of her first play, Parts They Call Deep in 2001. She is critically acclaimed, known in particular for her works that center prominent female characters, and yet operates in a lane of her own. Gunderson’s plays have never had a direct Broadway production, remaining wildly popular in off-Broadway and regional theater. 

“What I’m most proud of regarding the longevity of my career, is telling stories that center women and center them in a way that isn’t about one character alone in the spotlight defending herself,” says Gunderson. “What’s been most important to me is writing women of depth, soul, intelligence, but also heart. So many of the plays that we think are universal are plays about men, and I want to write universal plays that are about women.”

In Lady Disdain, Gunderson gets the chance to explore those threads while delving into a world that has long fascinated her: fantasy romance novels. In conversation with Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, Lady Disdain follows Beatrice and Benedict, rival audiobook narrators who share an incredibly inconvenient attraction with one another. Gunderson, who has adapted and created works based on Shakespeare’s plays in the past, had never gotten the chance to dive into what she deems the original “enemies to lovers” story. 

“Much Ado About Nothing has always been my favorite because it’s actually funny. It’s funny at this moment, because it’s about humans who are not as different now as they were 500 years ago when it comes to matters of the heart, friendship and loyalty,” says Gunderson. “What I get to do with these original enemies to lovers is talk about romance—the mythology of love and marriage—and then the reality that is often unequally weighted on women. It’s fun to read all the sexy stuff in romance novels, but then when it’s real life, we often turn the woman into the villain or pariah.”

In Lady Disdain, Gunderson is able to talk about the truth of the heart while simultaneously dissecting the double standards of modern romance. Doing so requires a deft touch—Lady Disdain, is after all, a romantic comedy—combining quick-witted banter with emotional vulnerability. The heart of Much Ado, Gunderson attests, is the quest for real, true connection. Behind the jabs and the punchlines, are characters looking, like most people in the real world, for someone to be vulnerable with. “There’s a big theme in our play of asking one of our two leads to be real. Can we drop the banter, drop the pretense and the one-up-man-ship and just say the true thing? The entire first act is getting Beatrice to the point where you don’t need a snappy comeback, you just need to say what you feel and be honest about it,” says Gunderson.

Gunderson has crafted a career out of using comedy as a vessel for telling stories of emotional import. In Lady Disdain, setting the story within the world of audiobook narration, allowed her to play within the confines of an industry that runs parallel to her own. The dichotomy of a classical trained actor narrating raunchy romance novels was too hilarious to pass up. “How funny is it for actors to code switch from reading some of the greatest roles written in the English language to doing audiobooks where they have to read all of these spicy scenes? There is a comedic tension between those two things where we’re expecting one thing and we get another,” says Gunderson. “It’s also a way to unpack the vulnerability of acting as a profession and of what these books allow people to experience.”

Directing the production at Asolo
Repertory Theatre is Sean Daniels, a frequent collaborator of Gunderson’s. The implementation of Daniels, who is the director of the Recovery Arts Project and a leader in recovery arts, provided another avenue for a theme with more emotional heft: sobriety. “One of the plot threads in Lady Disdain is somebody in early sobriety and how courageous and incredibly important that is in this upturned world,” says Gunderson. “It’s an interesting part of the story that I’m quite proud of. Lady Disdain is a romantic comedy, but it’s a rom-com about recovery and truth and all sorts of things beyond that. People might think that it’s a play for women, but it really is a universal story and one that is very funny for all those involved.” 

For Gunderson, that universality is where the real power of theater lies. Live performances are witnessed in person, in the presence of others, sharing a moment in time together. “When we look around the theater, we are sitting there in community with one another. There’s a lot of this world right now that does not want to be in community with each other, but instead wants to divide and separate,” says Gunderson. “I grew up going to church, I’m the daughter of a reverend and I often think of theater as a church. It’s a congregation—we’re coming together to find something to believe in, to turn our attention to and ponder the same question at the same time.”