Lauren Gunderson most produced living playwright in 2016 and 2017. Gunderson was awarded the Lanford Wilson award in 2016. Her play "I and You" was the winner of the 2014 Harold and Mimi Steinberg/American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award, and a finalist for the 2014 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Forward Theater, located in Madison, Wisconsin, will stage "I and You" from November 2–19, 2017. Artists Repertory Theatre, located in Portland, Oregon, will stage "I and You" from May 20 to June 17, 2018. Gunderson's play "Exit, Pursued By A Bear" has been performed around the country, winning Best Comedy in Austin,
Exit the King plays, the stage is filled with more and more objects or characters; in "Rhinoceros", for example, there are gradually more and more rhinoceroses. In this play, however, the kingdom and all the characters slowly disappear. Likewise, the language is generally more straight forward and comprehensible, eschewing Ionesco’s tendency toward abundant clichés and nonsense. Ionesco told Claude Bonnefoy in a 1966 interview that "Exit the King" did not "originate in a dream" as many of his plays did, but was "much more consciously composed. People immediately said: 'Oh! He’s given up the avant-garde, he’s turning classical!' It wasn’t a question of