Theater Review - Beautiful mind

Playwright Lauren Gunderson blinds us with science

Don’t hate Lauren Gunderson because she’s beautiful, young and a successful playwright.

True, she’s only 22, has won national playwriting awards and has had her plays staged around the country, including off-Broadway. And yes, that was her playing the seductive young gypsy in PushPush Theatre’s recent production of Camino Real. But it’s Gunderson’s undeniable talent, not her looks or youth, that have earned her acclaim. This week, Gunderson has two plays in production that prove her achievements rest on playful intelligence and a deft handle on heady materials.

While most playwrights her age pen thinly veiled personal stories about school, family and dating, Gunderson’s new plays focus on the lives and research of real physicists. Think Tom Stoppard instead of “Sex and the City.”

Leap, Gunderson’s fanciful take on the inspiration of young Isaac Newton, premiered Feb. 12 at Theater Emory. In Background, which debuted Feb. 19 at Essential Theatre’s 2004 Festival of New American Theatre, Gunderson focuses on an unsung researcher whose work inspired the Big Bang theory.

“It doesn’t feel like I’m breaking traditions of the playwriting community. I just have these raging interests,” says Gunderson. “When I read about something scientific that interests me, I think, ‘I bet there’s a person responsible for that — I wonder what their life is like.’”

Growing up in Decatur, Gunderson showed a flair for the dramatic at an early age, so her parents signed her up for acting classes at Actor’s Express when she was just a kid. At age 11, she was cast in her first play — Actor’s production of Tina Howe’s Approaching Zanzibar. After performing in Essential Theatre’s Images in Smoke in 2000, Gunderson gave the company’s artistic director Peter Hardy a copy of Parts They Call Deep, a play she wrote in high school. Gunderson hoped to get a few pointers. Instead, the play won Essential Theatre’s Playwriting Award the following year and received a full production.

That was just the beginning for Parts They Call Deep, which went on to win the Berrilla Kerr Award and the Young Playwrights Inc. award, which included a monthlong production at off-Broadway’s Cherry Lane Theatre. Between classes at Emory, Gunderson jetted to productions and workshops in New York, Portland and St. Petersburg, Fla., having dinner with Alfred Uhry and palling around with Margaret Edson.

Like Approaching Zanzibar, Parts They Call Deep is about a family on a cross-country trip. A quirky grandmother, mother and daughter are driving through the South, and all the play’s action takes place within a Winnebago. Gunderson acknowledges that Parts They Call Deep is “about myself and my perception of the world. But I was in high school then, and that’s a very small world,” she says.

Her interest in science expanded her worldview. She wrote Background for her Physics 121 class at Emory, and she not only received an A in the class but last fall picked up Essential Theatre’s Playwriting Award for the second time.

Background traces the career of physicist Ralph Alpher, who mathematically proved the existence of cosmic background radiation — a key to revealing the Big Bang theory — but remained in obscurity while other scientists received accolades. Background’s chronologically backward structure parallels how scientists date the origin of the universe, while the script features sharp insights into the unpleasant realities of the scientific community, which rewards fame over achievement.

Theater Emory’s production of Leap depicts a 24-year-old Isaac Newton (Alexander Brooks) developing most of his landmark ideas while living in rural seclusion. Gunderson imagines Newton being inspired by two ageless, youthful muses named Brightman (Angela Porter) and Maria (Lori Watson) — partially based on her and her younger sister. The supernatural siblings use games, poems and conversation to steer Newton to his theories. In one scene, passionate Brightman uses romance as a metaphor for gravitation.

Directed by Megan Monaghan, Leap features splendid language and easy confidence with heady material; Gunderson’s characters sound as if they know what they’re talking about. At times Gunderson’s dazzling ideas lack a dramatic engine, but friction develops when one of the sisters falls in love with Newton.

Though Gunderson already has “emerged” on the national theater scene, she plans to stay in Atlanta for the immediate future. She continues to act and has performed opposite her boyfriend Nick Rhoton in some productions at PushPush. The two share an interest in screenwriting and talk about pursuing a dream job developing scripts for HBO.

Gunderson is familiar with the myth about brilliant young artists who peak early then burn out, spending the rest of their careers trying to regain earlier talents. “You hear that a lot, especially in the performing arts, so it’s constantly a fear,” she says. “But Parts They Call Deep was a high-schooler’s version of life, and Leap is a college version of life. ... I’m looking forward to learning new words, to seeing how my writing will change when I’m married, or am a mother, or a grandmother.”

Gunderson graduated from Emory in December and is now development director for the Academy Theatre. But part of her still remains in the Ivory Tower. She’s currently working on a play that explores the implications of evolution, partly through a modern-day plot about a lesbian couple trying to adopt a baby and partly through Charles Darwin’s tensions with his deeply religious wife. Gunderson’s own evolution as a writer should be equally interesting to watch.

curt.holman@creativeloafing.com