From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited.

I'm Farah Kareem Cooper, the Folger director.

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 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 off stage.

A Room in the Castle was part of the 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 the play, The Book of Will, back in 2017.

Here's Lauren Gunderson, in conversation with Barbara Bogave.

Do you read Shakespeare or watch the plays and find yourself yelling at the page, you know, or the stage?

And the way people do, and they watch TV news. Oh, my gosh, or the stage. And the way people do,

when they watch TV news. Oh, my gosh, all the time, all the time. I am a very interactive

...