TBA:07 ON THE STAGE

YOUNG JEAN LEE'S THEATER COMPANY

Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven

“Lee’s snaky, tart-writing and her understanding of theatrical conventions seem to exist only so she can subvert and frustrate expectations.” —Time Out New York

Provocative writer/director Young Jean Lee’s worst nightmare is to make anything as predictable as a confessional, Korean-American identity play with a flowery Asian-sounding title, so she decided to do just that. Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven follows a character named “Korean-American” as she navigates—like a contestant in an identity-politics video game—the increasingly disturbing levels of a pseudo-Korean world. Full of blunt observations and unexpected turns, Lee’s warped, funny take on her cultural heritage raises difficult questions about race, culture, and identity that leave the audience uneasy, exhilarated, and grappling for answers.

Young Jean Lee was born in Korea in 1974 and moved to the U.S. when she was two. Since moving to New York in 2002, she has directed her plays at P.S. 122 (CHURCH; Pullman, WA), HERE Arts Center (Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven), Soho Rep (The Appeal), and the Ontological-Hysteric Theater (Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals). She is a member of New Dramatists and 13P, a resident artist at Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX), and has an MFA from Mac Wellman’s playwriting program at Brooklyn College. She has received grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Rockefeller MAP Foundation, Greenwall Foundation, and Jerome Foundation, and is the recipient of a 2007 Obie Award.

Produced by HERE Arts Center and Young Jean Lee’s Theater Company. This project is made possible in part by a grant from the National Performance Network’s Performance Residency Program. www.npnweb.org. Major contributors of the National Performance Network include the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency), Altria, and the Nathan Cummings Foundation.

www.youngjeanlee.org

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