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Lauren Weedman made her television debut on Comedy Central’s Emmy Award-winning THE DAILY SHOW WITH JON STEWART in 2001 as a featured Correspondent. It was at that same time that Lauren was a regular on NPR’s national, political satire show, REWIND and appeared in her solo show, HOMECOMING, Off-Broadway at the Westside Theatre. The New York Times said of Lauren and HOMECOMING, “Like Bob Newhart in his early stand-up routines, she’s particularly good at making her points – and making us feel clever. Most important, she’s just plain funny, physically and verbally”. For two years, Lauren was also a cast member for the long running local-turned-national comedy show ALMOST LIVE for Comedy Central.
After studying, writing and performing in Amsterdam for five years, Lauren returned to the States with a bang. Her first play, HOMECOMING, began as a 15-minute performance art piece that grew into a full-length show that ultimately toured with the Seattle Repertory Theatre. Later that year, HOMECOMING was featured at HBO’s U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado and later found it’s way to New York City. HOMECOMING earned Lauren the honor of being published in Women Playwrights: The Best Plays of 2002.
In the fall of 2002, The Empty Space Theatre in Seattle premiered her latest solo work, RASH, directed by Trip Cullman with music by David Russell and produced by Arielle Tepper Productions. Later that year, RASH was recognized by The Seattle Times’ Footlight Awards, with nods for both Best New Play and Best Solo Performance. Both RASH and Lauren received tremendous reviews including “Weedman comes so very close to celebrating indulgence rather than just contemplating it that when she manages to do both things at once, it’s dizzyingly brilliant: She ends up hitting all her targets – including herself (Seattle Weekly) and “Since first turning up on Seattle stages in the early 1990s, Lauren Weedman has proved herself one terrifically funny gal. And more people know that since she moved to New York two years ago and earned some well-deserved breaks in TV and Off-Broadway (The Seattle Times).”
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In 2004, Lauren’s show WRECKAGE, was selected for The NOW Theatre Festival at the REDCAT Theatre at The Disney Music Hall after a successful run at the Upright Citizens brigade theatre in Los Angeles. It was a LA weekly pick of the week describing Lauren and her work as “breathtaking…a female Robin Williams.”
Last year, Lauren’s most recent performance, BUST, was voted Best of the Arts by The Seattle Times, Seattle Magazine and Boise Weekly. Her performance of the show landed her on the cover of LA Weekly’s Comedy Issue. It was her work in BUST that led to her to receive the Alpert Award in the Arts for Playwriting. The award took her to a six week fellowship at the Macdowell Artist Colony in New Hampshire.
Her newest show NO..YOU SHUTUP (aka OFF) directed by Jeff Weatherford was commissioned by Boise Contemporary Theater and was featured as a part of Los Angeles’s REDCAT Theater New Works festival in the summer of 2009.
Lauren currently lives and performs in Los Angeles. She has appeared multiple times on RENO 911 for Comedy Central, as well as CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM for HBO. She also starred opposite Eddie Griffin in PRYOR OFFENSES, a Showtime pilot based on the life of Richard Pryor. Last year, Sasquatch Books released her first book, a collection of comedic essays, A WOMAN TRAPPED IN A WOMAN’S BODY (TALES FROM A LIFE OF CRINGE) which the Kirkus Review identified as one of the Top Ten Indy Books of 2007. Lauren recently appeared on the HBO series HUNG as “Horny Patty”, as well as opposite Eddie Murphy in IMAGINE THAT for Paramount. She will next be seen opposite Steve Carell and Tina Fey in the Fox feature DATE NIGHT.
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