It’s hard to categorize Lauren Weedman. Her eclectic body of work, spanning theatre, film, television, and memoir, has led to a delightfully bizarre notoriety: during a residency at the prestigious Macdowell Colony, Weedman went virtually unrecognized by her artistic peers, until the kitchen staff identified her from her appearances on VH1’s Best Week Ever. Her best known and breakout role was her stint as a featured correspondent on The Daily Show, an ill-fated experience she has summarized as “making jokes about the Amish and trying to get Jon Stewart to love me.” Though her time on air was brief, it provided Weedman with ample material: she hilariously recaps the ordeal in both her solo show Rash and her memoir, A Woman Trapped in a Woman’s Body: Tales from a Life of Cringe.
The uncomfortable, often humiliating, but undeniably humorous experiences of her personal life form the foundation of her solo work. Weedman has depicted her search for her birth mother (Homecoming), the fallout of a heinous lie she told in college (Wreckage) and, most recently, her anxieties over starting a family (No…You Shut Up), all while showcasing her enviable nimbleness as a performer, portraying dozens of characters ranging from highbrow to unsavory, in the course of an evening.
While she continues to rack up film and television gigs—she recurs as Horny Patty on HBO’s Hung and co-stars in the upcoming Judd Apatow-produced comedy Five Year Engagement—Weedman seems to have found her artistic niche with solo performance. “I’ve done standup, but it’s not what this is to me,” she says. “The last two shows I’ve been focused on trying to make a narrative—plot-driven, character-driven, semi-autobiographical, fast-paced dark comedies.” Bust certainly adheres to this formula: while the plot is based on Weedman’s experience as a volunteer advocate at a Los Angeles women’s prison as she simultaneously navigates professional mishaps and Hollywood superficiality, the play isn’t strictly autobiographical. As Weedman says, “I love blurring the line between truth and fiction, mostly because you can make things funnier. Plus, I can be really honest about my life because you don’t know what’s true. Then I can say, ‘Oh! You were offended by that? Yeah, that part was made up.’”
—Lauren Halvorsen