Cruising Close to Crazy

Laura Shaine Cunningham is the author of six full-length plays and several dozen short plays. She debuted at Steppenwolf Theater with a main stage production of her play BANG, a dark comedy set in an underground condominium. BANG received a Jefferson Award nomination. BEAUTIFUL BODIES premiered at Olympia Dukakis’s Whole Theater in New Jersey. BEAUTIFUL BODIES has gone on to worldwide major productions. BEAUTIFUL BODIES is one of the most popular plays in Russia (Current: State Theatre Ryazan in Ryazan, Russia, and Volgograd Theatre, Russia) and Ukraine, Finland, Bulgaria, Lithuania. Her short plays are published in numerous Random House anthologies, including Vintage’s Take Ten, Take Ten II, Plays for Actresses, Leading Women, Laugh Lines, and in Shorter, Faster, Funnier and in many of the Applause Books “Best Plays” series. SLEEPING ARRANGEMENTS premiered at Theater J, in Washington D.C. and WEB CAM WOMAN premiered at 13th Street Repertory Theater, and in London, at the Roundhouse. Her New York Times columns, and novels and articles often inspire or were derived from her plays. She regards herself as “trans-genre” — playwright-author-journalist and enjoys working in all three forms. She has published nine books. Laura Shaine Cunningham gives frequent lectures, and has taught playwriting at such prestigious universities as Harvard, Princeton, N.Y.U and Bennington. She is the Artistic Director of The Memoir Institute. She is a member playwright at Herbert Berghof Playwright Foundation in New York, and alumna of New Dramatists in New York, and has often worked as a member playwright in the PD (Playwright/Director Unit) at The Actors Studio in New York.