Young Jean Lee (born 1974) is an American playwright, director, and filmmaker. She was the Artistic Director of Young Jean Lee's Theater Company, a not-for-profit theater company dedicated to producing her work. She has written and directed ten shows for Young Jean Lee's Theater Company and toured her work to over thirty cities around the world. Lee was called "the most adventurous downtown playwright of her generation" by Charles Isherwood in The New York Times and "one of the best experimental playwrights in America" by David Cote in Time Out New York.David Cote, “The Shipment,” Time Out New York, January 2009 With the 2018 production of Straight White Men at the Hayes Theater, Lee became the first Asian American woman to have a play produced on Broadway.

Background Lee was born in South Korea and moved to the United States when she was two years old. She grew up in Pullman, Washington and attended college at UC Berkeley, where she majored in English and graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. Immediately after college, Lee entered UC Berkeley's English Ph.D. program, where she studied Shakespeare for six years before moving to New York to become a playwright. She received an MFA from Mac Wellman's playwriting program at Brooklyn College.

Lee is the granddaughter of Son Chint'ae, the founder of the academic study of folklore in Korea, who was kidnapped to North Korea during the North Korean invasion of 1950.

Works

Theater Lee's plays have been presented in New York City at Second Stage Theater (Straight White Men and We're Gonna Die), The Public Theater (Straight White Men), the Baryshnikov Arts Center (Untitled Feminist Show), LCT3/Lincoln Center Theater (We're Gonna Die), Joe's Pub (We're Gonna Die), Soho Repertory Theater (LearDavid Cote, “ LEAR: Father disfigure,” Time Out New York, January 2010. and The AppealDavid Cote, "The Appeal," Time Out New York, April 22–29, 2004.), The Kitchen (The Shipment)Charles Isherwood, "Off-Center Refractions of African-American Worlds," The New York Times, January 2009. The New York Times, The Public Theater (Church), P.S. 122 (Church),Jason Zinoman, "Confronting Questions of Faith With a Few New Responses," The New York Times, May 2007. The New York Times Pullman, Washington,David Cote, "Pullman, Washington," Time Out New York, March 2005 HERE Arts Center (Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven),Anita Gates, "Laugh Now. You May Not When These Women Rule the World," The New York Times, September 2006. The New York Times and the Ontological-Hysteric Theater (Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals). Her work has toured venues in Paris, Vienna, Hannover, Berlin, Zurich, Brussels, Budapest, Sydney, Melbourne, Bergen, Brighton, Hamburg, Oslo, Trondheim, Rotterdam, Salamanca, Graz, Seoul, Zagreb, Toulouse, Toronto, Calgary, Antwerp, Athens, London, Chicago, Chapel Hill, Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Columbus, Pittsburgh, Boston, New Hampshire, Williamstown, and Minneapolis.

Plays

Straight White Men (2014) Untitled Feminist Show (2011) We're Gonna Die (2011) Lear (2010) The Shipment (2009) Church (2007) Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven (2006) Pullman, WA (2005) The Appeal (2004) Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (2003) Yaggoo (2003)

Film Her first short film, Here Come the Girls, had its world premiere at the Locarno International Film Festival, its U.S. premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, and its New York premiere at BAMcinemaFest. Two of her other short films--A Meaning Full Life and Reenactment—also had their New York premieres at BAMcinemaFest.

Music Her band, Future Wife, released their debut album, We’re Gonna Die, in 2013. The band features members of various New York projects, including Cloud Becomes Your Hand, San Fermin, Field Guides, and Landlady. The album also features monologues performed by Adam Horovitz (Beastie Boys), Kathleen Hanna (Bikini Kill), Sarah Neufeld (Arcade Fire), Martin Schmidt and Drew Daniel (Matmos), Colin Stetson, David Byrne (Talking Heads), and Laurie Anderson. Young Jean Lee and Future Wife performed the show, We're Gonna Die, with David Byrne at his Meltdown Festival in London (Southbank Centre) in August 2015. The Velvet Underground's Lou Reed described Lee as, "One of the most accomplished, articulate, versatile, and hilarious playwrights, musicians, and artists that we in America have to offer."

Affiliations Outside her own company, Lee has worked with Radiohole and the National Theater of the United States of America. She is on the board of Yaddo, is a former member of New Dramatists and 13P, and has been awarded residencies from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, the Ucross Foundation, Hedgebrook, the Park Avenue Armory, Orchard Project, HERE Arts Center, and Brooklyn Arts Exchange.

Lee is currently the Denning Family Professor in the Arts at Stanford University.

Publications Theatre Communications Group has published all 11 of Lee's plays in four books: Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven and Other Plays;Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven and Other Plays, Theatre Communications Group, April 2009. The Shipment and Lear;The Shipment and Lear, Theatre Communications Group, April 2010. We're Gonna Die, and Straight White Men/Untitled Feminist Show. Other publications include: Three Plays by Young Jean LeeThree Plays by Young Jean Lee (Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, The Appeal, Pullman, WA), Samuel French, Spring 2006. (Samuel French, Inc.), New Downtown NowNew Downtown Now, edited by Mac Wellman and Young Jean Lee, University of Minnesota Press, June 2006 (an anthology edited with Mac Wellman), and An Interview with Richard Foreman in American Theatre magazine.Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven, American Theatre, September 2008.

Awards Lee is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, two OBIE Awards, a Prize in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a PEN Literary Award, a United States Artists Fellowship, the Windham–Campbell Prize, a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a Doris Duke Artist Residency, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award (2006), and the ZKB Patronage Prize of the Zürcher Theater Spektakel. She has also received funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation MAP Fund, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, Creative Capital, the Greenwall Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Arts Presenters/Ford Foundation Creative Capacity Grant, the Barbara Bell Cumming Foundation, and the New England Foundation for the Arts: National Theater Project Award.

References

External links

Young Jean Lee's Theater Company Official Website Young Jean Lee's Theater Company's Press and Publications Archive 2008 Bomb Magazine interview of Young Jean Lee by Richard Maxwell