Lauren M Gunderson, photo by Kirsten Lara Getchall

izzy's playlists!
TVSTRANGERTHINGS
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Show & Tell
$LAYYYTER

Love Begins
Misplaced Lens Cap
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
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Jules of Nature
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda
styofa doing anything
Mike Driver
Not today Justin
RMH
Today's Document
wallacepolsom
will byers stan first human second
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
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@ofcourseimafeminist
Lauren M Gunderson, photo by Kirsten Lara Getchall
https://soundcloud.com/lauren-gunderson-1/adas-vision-by-the-kilbanes-from-the-play-ada-and-the-engine
A More Perfect Union: Where the political ideas in THE TAMING come from
All the proposals for Constitutional reform that come from Katherine in The Taming actually from from prominent political scientists like Larry Sabato and Lawrence Lessing.
See more from Mr. Sabato’s website about his book A More Perfect Constitution.
And here is Lawrence Lessing in The Atlantic on calling a Constitutional Convention:
This inability to act is tied fundamentally to the way we fund campaigns. Congress can’t act with any sense so long as its members are focused obsessively on campaign dollars. And neither will Congress change unless strong pressure from the outside is rallied against it.
A convention is the chance for such pressure. It is also the chance for America to focus on solutions. Though there is widespread acceptance of the problem we face, and its source in the way campaigns are funded, there is not yet broad-based support for a particular solution. But a convention is at least a chance to engender a consensus, as it works through the wide range of proposals, including many from the right, that are pushing legislators to support a convention.
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.
Read the play about Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage here https://newplayexchange.org/plays/47247/ada-and-engine
Malala and Emma Watson talk about why they’re feminists, and it’s awesome.
The first posters for Suffragette.
See the trailer.
OH MY GOD.
HERE FOR THIS
Maggie Smith
30 INCREDIBLE ADA LOVELACE QUOTES
Ada Lovelace was a mathematician known for her work on Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, the first proto computer designed in the Dickensian England. Babbage nicknamed Ada, “The Enchantress of Numbers,” and she is considered by many as the world’s first computer programmer for her famous “Note G” where she described how Babbage’s machine would solve Bernoulli Numbers. She died in 1852 from uterine cancer at the age of 36, just like her famous father Lord Byron…
Here are 30 amazing direct quotes from Lady Lovelace…
“A new, a vast, and a powerful language is developed for the future use of analysis, in which to wield its truths so that these may become of more speedy and accurate practical application for the purposes of mankind than the means hitherto in our possession have rendered possible.”
“I never am really satisfied that I understand anything; because, understand it well as I may, my comprehension can only be an infinitesimal fraction of all I want to understand about the many connections and relations which occur to me, how the matter in question was first thought of or arrived at, etc.”
“In abstract mathematics, of course operations alter those particular relations which are involved in the considerations of number and space, and the results of operations are those peculiar results which correspond to the nature of the subjects of operation.”
“In almost every computation a great variety of arrangements for the succession of the processes is possible, and various considerations must influence the selections amongst them for the purposes of a calculating engine.”
“In considering any new subject, there is frequently a tendency, first, to overrate what we find to be already interesting or remarkable; and, secondly, by a sort of natural reaction, to undervalue the true state of the case, when we do discover that our notions have surpassed those that were really tenable.”
“In enabling mechanism to combine together general symbols in successions of unlimited variety and extent, a uniting link is established between the operations of matter and the abstract mental processes of the most abstract branch of mathematical science.”
“It may be desirable to explain, that by the word operation, we mean any process which alters the mutual relation of two or more things, be this relation of what kind it may. This is the most general definition, and would include all subjects in the universe.”
“It were much to be desired, that when mathematical processes pass through the human brain instead of through the medium of inanimate mechanism, it were equally a necessity of things that the reasonings connected with operations should hold the same just place as a clear and well-defined branch of the subject of analysis, a fundamental but yet independent ingredient in the science, which they must do in studying the engine.”
“Many persons who are not conversant with mathematical studies imagine that because the business of [Babbage’s Analytical Engine] is to give its results in numerical notation, the nature of its processes must consequently be arithmetical and numerical, rather than algebraical and analytical. This is an error. The engine can arrange and combine its numerical quantities exactly as if they were letters or any other general symbols; and in fact it might bring out its results in algebraical notation, were provisions made accordingly.”
“One essential object is to choose that arrangement which shall tend to reduce to a minimum the time necessary for completing the calculation.”
“Secondly, figures, the symbols of numerical magnitude, are frequently also the symbols of operations, as when they are the indices of powers. Wherever terms have a shifting meaning, independent sets of considerations are liable to become complicated together, and reasoning and results are frequently falsified.”
“That brain of mine is something more than merely mortal; as time will show.”
“The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform. It can follow analysis; but it has no power of anticipating any analytical relations or truths. Its province is to assist us in making available what we are already acquainted with.”
“The Analytical Engine weaves algebraic patterns, just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves.”
“The Analytical Engine, on the contrary, can either add, subtract, multiply or divide with equal facility; and performs each of these four operations in a direct manner, without the aid of any of the other three.”
“The intellectual, the moral, the religious seem to me all naturally bound up and interlinked together in one great and harmonious whole.”
“The method of differences is, in fact, a method of additions; and as it includes within its means a larger number of results attainable by addition simply, than any other mathematical principle, it was very appropriately selected as the basis on which to construct an Adding Machine, so as to give to the powers of such a machine the widest possible range.”
“The more I study, the more insatiable do I feel my genius for it to be.”
“The object of the engine is in fact to give the utmost practical efficiency to the resources of numerical interpretations of the higher science of analysis, while it uses the processes and combinations of this latter.”
“The purpose which that engine has been specially intended and adapted to fulfill, is the computation of nautical and astronomical tables.”
“This one fact implies everything; and it is scarcely necessary to point out, for instance, that while the Difference Engine can merely tabulate, and is incapable of developing, the Analytical Engine can either tabulate or develop.”
“Those who view mathematical science, not merely as a vast body of abstract and immutable truths, whose intrinsic beauty, symmetry and logical completeness, when regarded in their connection together as a whole, entitle them to a prominent place in the interest of all profound and logical minds, but as possessing a yet deeper interest for the human race, when it is remembered that this science constitutes the language through which alone we can adequately express the great facts of the natural world, and those unceasing changes of mutual relationship which, visibly or invisibly, consciously or unconsciously to our immediate physical perceptions, are interminably going on in the agencies of the creation we live amidst: those who thus think on mathematical truth as the instrument through which the weak mind of man can most effectually read his Creator’s works, will regard with especial interest all that can tend to facilitate the translation of its principles into explicit practical forms.”
“Thus not only the mental and the material, but the theoretical and the practical in the mathematical world, are brought into more intimate and effective connection with each other.”
“Understand well as I may, my comprehension can only be an infinitesimal fraction of all I want to understand. ”
“We cannot forbear suggesting one practical result which it appears to us must be greatly facilitated by the independent manner in which the engine orders and combines its operations: we allude to the attainment of those combinations into which imaginary quantities enter.”
“We may say most aptly, that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves.”
“We might even invent laws for series or formula in an arbitrary manner, and set the engine to work upon them, and thus deduce numerical results which we might not otherwise have thought of obtaining; but this would hardly perhaps in any instance be productive of any great practical utility, or calculated to rank higher than as a philosophical amusement.”
We asked for your nominations for unsung women in science – and you did not disappoint.
More coming soon!
The big news! THE REVOLUTIONISTS is premiering at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park directed by the incomparable Eleanor Holdridge! Who doesn’t want to see a “world premiere fantasia” set during the French Revolution? Because whoever that is is NO FUN.
”THE REVOLUTIONISTS By Lauren Gunderson Feb. 6 – March 6, 2016
Four beautiful, badass women lose their heads in this irreverent, girl-powered comedy set during the French Revolution. At the height of the Reign of Terror, playwright Olympe De Gouges, assassin Charlotte Corday, activist Marianne Angelle and former queen Marie Antoinette hang out, plot murder and try to beat back extremist insanity in Paris. This world premiere fantasia by one of the country’s most exciting young playwrights considers how we actually go about changing the world.”
This International Women’s Day, celebrate Henrietta Leavitt, who took us beyond the stars and into the galaxies.
AWESOME art for Theatre Pro Rata's upcoming production of EMILIE: La Marquise Du Chatelet Defends Her Life Tonight in Minneapolis this June.
WHAT? Yes. Adore.
Emilie Du Chatelet was a complete intellectual badass in 18th century France, and a killer card shark, AND a lover of the maddeningly witty Voltaire.
Raves for this Minneapolis production of Emilie...
“This is one of the most original and engaging shows of the year.” -Star Tribune
“I’ll make this simple: go and see Theatre Pro Rata’s production of Emilie as quickly as you can. Director Bratlie, author Gunderson, and actor Custer have come together in a perfect storm of a performance.” -TC Daily Planet
“…a show centered as much on intellect as passion move[s] along with real energy and a firm grasp of its ultimate goal.” -City Pages
“Custer feels right at home, both in her period costume and with the emotional demands of the role”
“Matt Sciple… finds the humanity and the vulnerability in the role, along with plenty of intriguing little nuances that alternately earn our respect and our contempt for the character.” -Pioneer Press
Awesome, cheeky #AdaLovelace poster from A Mighty Girl. “Debug (Babbage.algorithm).” #AdaPlay
Writing — coming to writing — is a profound act of self-realization that can be as arduous and painful as it can be exhilarating. I try hard not to coalesce all men into one lumpen category, including those who doubtless have also overcome struggles, internal and external, to be where they are. Struggles are often invisible. But one need only look at the pages of our literary magazines to see that women’s writing has a wholly different status culturally — Alice Munro, Hilary Mantel, Eleanor Catton notwithstanding. Our idea of serious, intellectual writing appears to be overwhelmingly male. […] Women often resist being described as “women writers,” and with good reason. The need to prefix “writer” with a tag suggests that writer really means male writer (or perhaps, more specifically, white, straight male writer). It implies that readers need to be warned; that women are intruders on the default terrain — which, in the pages of many magazines, they are… The implication is that women are trapped within their particularity, unable to speak to those who don’t share it, while the writing of (straight, white) men is universal rather than particular. […] But everyone is shaped by their experience of gender, whatever that experience is; there is no view from nowhere.
Absolutely spectacular and culturally necessary LA Review of Books essay by Katherine Angel. The cultural bias she so elegantly articulates is evident in everything from Margaret Atwood’s lament, two decades ago, about literature’s “women problem” to Neil deGrasse Tyson’s woefully gender-biased reading list.
Rebecca Solnit – undoubtedly one of the greatest essayists of our time – explored this in depth in her excellent Men Explain Things to Me.
Angel’s full essay is well worth reading. Complement it with this pause-giving perspective on how even the best-intentioned of us succumb to unconscious social biases.
(via explore-blog)
Why Should We Watch This Play?
An essay by director David Prete on the first day of I and You rehearsal at RedTwist in Chicago which opens Nov 29th, 2014.
I just loved David’s summation of the work and themes of my play and thought it would be worth sharing (with his permission). He’s one of those directors that I really treasure as he seems to understand my plays better than I do at times. I said that to him once and he said, “No, I just understand them differently.” Grateful for great collaborators. - Lauren
"Why should we ask an audience to watch two high school kids do homework for 90 minutes? That is arguably the plot summary of this play. (There is the whole meta- plot, but that’s not revealed until minute 88.) I’m sincerely asking why we should ask people to sit in this room with us, because I don’t think we can make anything worthwhile without asking that question. Two high school kids do homework. That is the plot of the play. But the story of the play—and what I really want to ask people to watch—is this: during the time it takes two teenagers to do their homework, they stand behind each other’s eyes and see a wisdom and love that forms who they will be for the rest of their lives and beyond. I think it’s a worthy story. Because standing behind the eyes of another person to gain life- altering wisdom is something everyone knows something about. A person could argue that they don’t know anything about that, but that would only mean they forgot it happened to them. Which would put us in the business of reminding them.
Before I continue I need to tell you about what I get from art, because the wisdom art brings us is also something this play is about.
First time I heard John Coltrane’s My Favorite Things I was standing in a Hell’s Kitchen bar. When the first few notes hit my ear I thought: What the fuck IS this? Obviously I knew it was that song from The Sound of Music, but Coltrane was demanding that I hear something new in it. It took me a while but I finally heard what Coltrane had put in the notes. He was saying: Melancholy and joy function best together. And this wisdom came at the perfect time, because I was a young actor still in the conservatory and I was struggling to get rid of my melancholy because I thought it was blocking my joy. In the middle of my struggle Coltrane stepped in and said: Not true. Joy doesn’t need to take the place of melancholy; they really need to stay together. I sensed that if I allowed the union of those two things, I would be a better actor and more complete person. This spiritual implications of that hit me fuckin hard. And finding art that could give me that kind of wisdom became one of my greatest desires. Obsessions.
What we’ll finally ask people to come into this room to watch is two high school kids who pursue life-altering wisdom with each other and through each other. A wisdom that will show them how to see beyond the ordinary, to the best possible life, in spite of how long or short lived it may be.
The fun and beauty of our job, is discovering specifically why they pursue these things, how they pursue them, and what blocks their pursuit. The point is not how often we discover these things; the point is that every day we get to look for them. And we’ve already begun.”
- David Prete, director of I and You at Redtwist Theatre in Chicago delivered upon their first rehearsal 10/10/14.