Lauren Weedman is an award-winning performance artist, playwright, author, teacher and host.
Born in an unwed mother’s home in Terre Haute, Indiana, 1969.
She studied Acting at DePaul Theater School and Feminist Film Study at Indiana University. She left Indiana and moved to Amsterdam to study Experimental Theater. Working with former members of Joseph Chaikins Open Theater and Ariana’s Mounshkind Teatre Du Soleil.
Her first solo theater play, HOMECOMING premiered off-Broadway at Westside Theatre on September 10, 2001. 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.” Homecoming was featured at HBO's U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado and was published in “Women Playwrights: The Best Plays of 2002.”
Lauren has written and performed over 14 autobiographical full length, multi-character, solo plays.
Her most successful of her shows, Bust was commissioned by Seattle’s Empty Space Theatre and was based on her her work as a volunteer with the organization “Friends Outside” a service to inmates at the California Correctional Institute for women-also known as Twin Towers. She toured Bustin the US and it was named “Best in the Arts” by Seattle Weekly, Seattle Times, and Boise Weekly. She was a finalist for the Alpert Award of the Arts and received a fellowship at the MacDowell Colony.
Her essays and stories have been published in New York Magazine, Jezebel, Glamour, The Stranger, and aired on the Dinner Party Download and Unfictional. Weedman’s first book, A Woman Trapped in a Woman’s Body: (Tales from a Life of Cringe), is a collection of comedic essays and was named by Kirkus Review as a top ten Indie book for 2007. Her latest book, Miss Fortune: Fresh Perspectives on Having it All from Someone Who is NOT OKAY, was a LA Times Bestseller, published by Random House. Kirkus Reviews called MISS FORTUNE a “winning essay collection,” and LA Weekly wrote of Weedman, “She’s already succeeded in showing millennials how memoir writing is done – with lots of well-digested experiences, an original voice and a scathing wit…”
In 2017 she began “The City Show “ tour. Weedman travels to a city and spends a week there gathering stories, exploring, and imagining what it might be like to move there as a single mother to raise her son. Nothing is planned. The minute she gets on the plane the story begins. A blend of humor, fact-finding, anecdotes and personal stories. This American Life meets Anthony Bourdain’s ‘No Reservations” on stage. Every show is completely different and incorporates her own personal story with stories from that city, video diaries and characters she meets during the week of her visit.
Among her many television roles, Lauren played Doris on HBO’s Looking, and appeared as Horny Patty on HBO’s Hung. She was a correspondent on The Daily Show, and also appeared in Will and Grace, True Blood, United States of Tara, Reno 911!, Curb Your Enthusiasm, New Girl, 2 Broke Girls, Euphoria and Arrested Development. Film credits include Looking:The Movie, Joshy, The Little Hours, Wilson, Imagine That, Date Night, and Judd Apatow’s The Five Year Engagement. Currently she's Mayor Jo on Hacks and Kristin Marie on Abbott Elementary.
“...Weedman is a brilliant storyteller- her uncanny knack for finding the sweet spot between observational and self-revelatory humor-“ -Boise Weekly
Lauren lives in rent-controlled apartment in Santa Monica, with her 15-year-old son Leo and her cat “Cosco”. She is the host of the popular Moth Storytelling Slam in Los Angeles.
