Laural’s current project is Ms. Tucker Will See You Now - a cabaret/theater show exploring the life and risque song catalog of jazz great Sophie Tucker. The show
plays (most) first Saturday's of the month at the Gardenia Supper Club in Los Angeles. Visit www.gardeniasupperclub.com for
all details and reservations!
Recent projects with her students at Occidental College inculde a production of
A Dream Play by August Strindberg in a new version by Caryl Churchill and an inter-active digital performance
piece called Trope! (Fear is a Villain). Inspired by movie thrillers, the show explores how a year in quaratine
has made us look at ourselves squarely through the camera's eye. During quarantine, she workshopped and produced with her
students and colleagues at Occidental college. The production program can be found here.
Other projects are completion of The Bomb, a
commission from the Mark Taper Forum about on the war between capital and labor at the turn of the 20th Century and the
bombing of the Los Angeles Times in 1910. The Taper hosted in-house developmental workshops where Laural was able to collaborate
with some of her favorite actors to devise material, movement and music related to union organizing, wage disparity, and the
relative nature of justice.
Laural’s
original musical work Harry Thaw Hates Everybody ran at Berkeley's Shotgun Players under the direction
of M. Graham Smith. The play, a true story centered on the Gilded Age collision between hedonism and
poverty, made its highly acclaimed world premiere at the Los Angeles Theatre Center after a series of developmental readings
in the Mark Taper Forum’s New Work Festival. Directed by Meade, Harry Thaw went on to win
the Los Angeles Drama Critics’ Circle award for Best Writing, along with a variety of LA Weekly, Ovation
and Garland awards and nominations for writing, directing, acting and design. The script was recently published by Samuel
French.
Speeltheater Holland and Childsplay collaborated to bring the European version of Rock Paper
Scissors, co-written and directed with collaborator Corey Madden, to the U.S. for a limited
run in Arizona. In 2010, the play enjoyed a three-month tour throughout the Netherlands and Belgium in the under the
auspices of Speeltheater. RPS was originally commissioned and produced by Childsplay in the Tempe, Arizona,
where it was the recipient of a MAP Fund grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. A fully narrative, non‐verbal performance
event, it explores the effect of technology on creativity by utilizing the theatrical and transformative possibilities of
white paper. The piece toured throughout Arizona in 2009, playing to over 20,000 audience members of all ages and was the
recipient of Zoni Awards for Best Production, Acting and Sound.
From 2009-2011, Laural was a Core Member of the Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis. Her original play,
The Suffragist Roadshow was developed there in 2009 and 2011 as part of the Ruth Easton Reading Series.
Originally developed in the Mark Taper Forum writers' lab, the piece is a semi‐fictionalized account of a 1915 coast‐to‐coast
roadtrip/publicity stunt undertaken by a group of radical suffragists.
Other projects with the Mark Taper Forum include
her original play Animal Logic (also conceived with Corey Madden), a vaudevillian trunk show about the emotional
and cognitive abilities of animals which toured extensively throughout 2007‐08, concluding with a run at the Kirk Douglas
Theatre; The Biggest Game of All, another piece for all ages, chronicling the true
stories of young people involved in curbing the manufacture of sporting goods by children; and a variety
of new play development directing and dramaturgy projects.
In
addition to a MAP Fund/Rockefeller award in support of Animal Logic, Laural has been the recipient of grants
from the California Arts Council, the Flintridge Foundation, the Brody Fund, the National/State/County Partnership and the
City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department. In the early part of her career she worked in new play development at Los
Angeles Theater Center (where she collaborated extensively with late directed Reza Abdoh) and A.S.K. Theater Projects (where
she produced over 25 readings of new plays by local, national and international theater artists).
During
and after this time she was also the Producing Director of two L.A. based-theater companies dedicated to the production of
socially relevant new work. Among a variety of projects for The Butane Group, she wrote and directed Leopold
and Loeb: A Goddamn Laff Riot. Named a critic’s pick by The Los Angeles Times and Back Stage West
and the winner of a Garland Award for Best Writing, the piece made its premiere at Seattle’s On the Boards via a grant
from Dance Theater Workshop. For Indecent Exposure she wrote, among others, The Wide Open Ocean, a musical
vaudeville about Los Angeles charlatan/evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, as a co-production with The Actors’ Gang,
under the direction of Tracy Young.
Laural holds an MFA in playwriting from UCLA and a BA in theater from Occidental College, where she is currently
a member of the theater faculty. Years after graduating, Laural returned as the Remsen Bird Guest Artist at Occidental, conducting
writing courses, directing main stage productions, and guest lecturing in related departments. The residency became a full-time
appointment and today Meade continues her work with students by teaching courses in playwriting, dramatic literature, theater-going
and musical theater performance. Her research centers on new playwriting and devised work from divergent cultural and aesthetic
backgrounds. Additionally, she mentors thesis projects, directs mainstage productions, and produces an annual festival of
student-written plays directed and performed by guest artists from the Los Angeles theater community. Laural has also been
a guest instructor at the University of Redlands and has worked as a guest lecturer at the USC School of Dramatic Arts Graduate
Division, the California Institute of the Arts, the Ojai Playwrights Conference, and Cal State Los Angeles.
'23-'24 marks Laural's 26th year teaching at Occidental, where she was recently the recipient of the
inaugural Faculty Award for Creative Mentoring from the school's Undergraduate Research Center.