Young Jean Lee
Lee (right) interviewed by Mina Morita, 2019
Born	1974 (age 49–50) Daegu, South Korea
Occupation	Playwright, director, filmmaker
Nationality	American
Education	University of California, Berkeley (BA) Brooklyn College (MFA)
Period	Contemporary
Literary movement	Experimental, Avant-garde
Website
Official website

Young Jean Lee
Hangul	이 영진
Revised Romanization	Yi Yeongjin
McCune–Reischauer	Yi Yǒngjin

Young Jean Lee 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^[1] and "one of the best experimental playwrights in America" by David Cote in Time Out New York.^[2] 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.^[3]

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^[4] and graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.^[5] 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.^[6]

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.^[7]

Works

Theater

Lee's plays have been presented in New York City at Second Stage Theater (Straight White Men^[8] and We're Gonna Die^[9]), The Public Theater (Straight White Men),^[10] the Baryshnikov Arts Center (Untitled Feminist Show),^[11] LCT3/Lincoln Center Theater (We're Gonna Die), Joe's Pub (We're Gonna Die),^[12] Soho Repertory Theater (Lear),^[13] The Appeal,^[14] The Kitchen (The Shipment)^[15] The Public Theater (Church), P.S. 122 (Church),^[16] Pullman, Washington,^[17] HERE Arts Center (Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven),^[18] 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, Vienna, 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[edit]

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.^[19]

Music[edit]

Her band, Future Wife, released their debut album, We’re Gonna Die, in 2013.^[20] The band features members of various New York projects, including Cloud Becomes Your Hand, San Fermin, Field Guides, and Landlady.^[21] 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.^[22] 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.^[23] 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."^[24]

Affiliations[edit]

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 a Professor of Theater and Performance Studies at Stanford University.^[25]^[26]

Publications[edit]

Theatre Communications Group has published all 11 of Lee's plays in four books: Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven and Other Plays;^[27] The Shipment and Lear;^[28] We're Gonna Die, and Straight White Men/Untitled Feminist Show.^[29] Other publications include: Three Plays by Young Jean Lee^[30] (Samuel French, Inc.), New Downtown Now^[31] (an anthology edited with Mac Wellman), and An Interview with Richard Foreman in American Theatre magazine.^[32]

Awards[edit]

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,^[33] a United States Artists Fellowship,^[34] the Windham–Campbell Prize,^[35] 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.^[36] 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[edit]

^ Isherwood, Charles (January 17, 2012). "Untitled Feminist Show". The New York Times.
^ David Cote, “The Shipment,” Time Out New York, January 2009
^ Paulson, Michael (20 April 2017). "Rebuilding a Broadway Theater With American Voices". New York Times. Retrieved 18 June 2018.
^ Als, Hilton (3 November 2014). "Young Jean Lee's Identity Plays". The New Yorker. Retrieved 18 June 2018.
^ Lee, Young Jean (Feb 9, 2019). "Opinion | I'm Asian-American. Affirmative Action Worked for Me". The New York Times. Retrieved Jun 2, 2019.
^ "Editors, Times Topics - Young Jean Lee". The New York Times.
^ Grayson, James H. (31 Aug 2022). "Son Chint'ae: Some Further Reflections on the Founder of Modern Korean Folklore Studies". Folklore. 133 (3): 257–266. doi:10.1080/0015587X.2022.2074640. S2CID 251980327.
^ Green, Jesse (July 23, 2018). "Review: 'Straight White Men,' Now Checking Their Privilege on Broadway". The New York Times. Retrieved 3 April 2023.
^ Green, Jesse (February 25, 2020). "Review: In 'We're Gonna Die,' Pop Songs for the Reaper". The New York Times. Retrieved 3 April 2023.
^ Isherwood, Charles (November 18, 2014). "My Three Sons and All Their Troubles, 'Straight White Men' Opens at the Public Theater". The New York Times.
^ Als, Hilton (January 19, 2012). "Young Jean Lee's "Untitled Feminist Show"". The New Yorker.
^ Isherwood, Charles (April 10, 2011). "Amid Catchy Choruses, Personal Tales of Life's Brutal Verities". The New York Times.
^ David Cote, “ LEAR: Father disfigure,” Time Out New York, January 2010.
^ David Cote, "The Appeal," Time Out New York, April 22–29, 2004.
^ Charles Isherwood, "Off-Center Refractions of African-American Worlds," The New York Times, January 2009. The New York Times,
^ Jason Zinoman, "Confronting Questions of Faith With a Few New Responses," The New York Times, May 2007. The New York Times
^ David Cote, "Pullman, Washington," Time Out New York, March 2005
^ Anita Gates, "Laugh Now. You May Not When These Women Rule the World," The New York Times, September 2006. The New York Times
^ "Young Jean Lee". IMDb.
^ McGovern, Kyle (31 July 2013). "Hear Ad-Rock's Heartbreaking Monologue From Future Wife's 'We're Gonna Die'". Spin.
^ "ABOUT FUTURE WIFE". futurewifeband.tumblr.com. Retrieved 2016-05-02.
^ "Future Wife - We're Gonna Die". Spotify. Retrieved 3 April 2023.
^ "Review: We're Gonna Die, Queen Elizabeth Hall". A Younger Theatre. 31 August 2015.
^ "A Message About Young Jean Lee From Lou Reed". Young Jean Lee's Theater Company Archive. Retrieved 3 April 2023.
^ "Stanford Profiles | Young Jean Lee". Stanford University Profiles. Retrieved 3 April 2023.
^ "Stanford Profiles: Young Jean Lee". Retrieved 2019-02-15.
^ Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven and Other Plays, Theatre Communications Group, April 2009.
^ The Shipment and Lear, Theatre Communications Group, April 2010.
^ "Straight White Men / Untitled Feminist Show".
^ Three Plays by Young Jean Lee (Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, The Appeal, Pullman, WA')'Samuel French, Spring 2006.
^ New Downtown Now, edited by Mac Wellman and Young Jean Lee, University of Minnesota Press, June 2006
^ Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven, American Theatre, September 2008.
^ "Young Jean Lee Wins PEN Award". Asian American Theatre Revue. March 1, 2016. Retrieved 3 April 2023.
^ "Young Jean Lee". United States Artists. Retrieved 3 April 2023.
^ "Young Jean Lee". Windham Campbell. Retrieved 3 April 2023.
^ BWW News Desk (5 March 2018). "Young Jean Lee To Receive 2018 Edwin Booth Award". BroadwayWorld.com. Retrieved 18 June 2018.

External links[edit]

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