Young Jean Lee
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 and "one of the best experimental playwrights in America" by David Cote in Time Out New York. 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, , the Baryshnikov Arts Center, LCT3/Lincoln Center Theater, Joe's Pub, Soho Repertory Theater, The Kitchen The Public Theater, P.S. 122, Pullman, Washington, HERE Arts Center, and the Ontological-Hysteric Theater. 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 Untitled Feminist Show We're Gonna Die Lear The Shipment Church Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven Pullman, WA The Appeal Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals- ''Yaggoo''
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, , 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, Kathleen Hanna, Sarah Neufeld, Martin Schmidt and Drew Daniel, Colin Stetson, David Byrne, and Laurie Anderson. Young Jean Lee and Future Wife performed the show, , with David Byrne at his in London 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.