Lily Janiak January 26, 2021Updated: January 27, 2021, 7:21 am
Nathan (William DeMeritt) explains what the evolution of viruses tells us about life in “The Catastrophist.” Photo: Marin Theatre Company
Maybe you learned in high school biology that viruses aren’t alive. They don’t have cells. They can’t live without a host. They don’t perform all the biological processes that elsewhere are the hallmarks of life.
But whether viruses are alive, the character of Nathan tells us in “The Catastrophist,” doesn’t matter. It’s uninteresting, a question of semantics.
Rather, what’s interesting is what the co-evolution of viruses with organisms can tell us about how life begins, both here and in other star systems, Nathan says in the digital world-premiere commission, a co-production of the Marin Theatre Company and Round House Theatre.
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Virus hunter Nathan Wolfe is the subject of a new play - and he s also the playwright s husband
Thomas Floyd, The Washington Post
Jan. 22, 2021
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Actor William DeMeritt portrays Nathan Wolfe in The Catastrophist, Lauren Gunderson s one-man play based on the real-life virologist (who is also Gunderson s husband).Marin Theatre Company
As not just the husband of a playwright but the subject of her latest work, virologist Nathan Wolfe knows that when it comes to onstage depictions of real people, the writer gets the last word.
Wolfe surmised as much long before he saw himself in Lauren Gunderson s The Catastrophist, a new one-man play that will be available to stream, starting Tuesday, in a filmed version co-produced by Round House Theatre in Bethesda, Md., and the Marin Theatre of Mill Valley, Calif. Speaking alongside his wife over video chat from their Bay Area home, Wolfe recalls first learning the power of Gunder
Lauren Gunderson writes about Nathan Wolfe for a Marin Theatre Company and Round House Theatre world premiere
Lily Janiak January 14, 2021Updated: January 26, 2021, 7:38 pm
Virologist Nathan Wolfe and playwright Lauren Gunderson at their home in San Francisco. Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle
When Lauren Gunderson’s agent introduced her to virologist Nathan Wolfe more than a decade ago, the joke was, “Oh, Lauren, you should write something about Nathan.”
“I kind of collect them, because they’re fascinating,” Gunderson says, half jokingly, of scientists.
Indeed, the San Francisco playwright who was twice named the most-produced playwright in America by American Theatre magazine writes frequently about scientists and has a whole circle of physicist friends. (Science and theater have been fused for her ever since her high school physics teacher in Decatur, Ga., Mr. Winterscheidt, let her write tiny plays instead of lab reports.)
Marin Theatre Company to Digitally Premiere The Catastrophist, a New Play About Pandemics
Local playwright Lauren Gunderson has written a new one-man play about virus hunter Nathan Wolfe and his prognostications about the economic impact of a pandemic before this one began. And now it s set to premiere virtually via the Marin Theatre Company this month.
Gunderson, whose one-woman show
Natural Shocks has been available to hear a radio play via Marin Theatre Company after its in-person premiere was canceled due to the pandemic last March, is actually married to Wolfe, and she says it hadn t occurred to her to write a play about him or his work until recently, for obvious reasons.