The Shipment and Lear - by Young Jean Lee (Paperback)

About the Book

Two provocative and thought-provoking works on identity politics by experimental writer-director Young Jean Lee.

Book Synopsis

"Lee's way of subverting expectations leaves us questioning our own latent assumptions and desires about theatre, race, death and entertainment. She understands and exploits the unique strengths of her medium: the ability to viscerally connect with an audience." -The Economist

Experimental Korean American theatre artist Young Jean Lee has been called "one of the best experimental playwrights in America" (Time Out New York). This volume contains two of her recent works:

In The Shipment, Lee provides a provocative look at African-American identity in our not-yet post-racial society. The New York Times calls this take on cultural images of black America "a subversive, seriously funny new theater piece... Ms. Lee wields sharp, offbeat humor to point up the clichés, distortions and absurdities" (Charles Isherwood, New York Times).

LEAR is Lee's own version of Shakespeare's tragedy, focusing on the king's three daughters. A production in which Lear himself never appears, LEAR is a "wacky blend of 'To be or not to be, ' Beckett, and Pirandello...full of exhilarating, illuminating moments" (Village Voice).

Young Jean Lee has written and directed shows in New York with Young Jean Lee's Theater Company and toured her work to over twenty cities around the world. Her plays include Straight White Men, We're Gonna Die, Untitled Feminist Show, The Shipment, Lear and Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven. Awards include two Obies, the Festival Prize of the Zuercher Theater Spektakel, a Prize in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Doris Duke Artist Award.

Review Quotes

The Shipment
"Lee is a facetious provocateur; that is, she does whatever she can to get under our skin--with laughs and with raw, brutal talk...Lee makes her audience walk a knife's edge of race and meaning. How does blackness sound? And how have we been conditioned to hear black speech?...This is so ingenious a twist, such a radical bit of theatrical smoke and mirrors, that, in rethinking everything that has come before...we are forced to confront our own preconceived notions of race. And to agree with Lee that we may not live long enough to purge ourselves of them." -Hilton Als, New Yorker

"[The Shipment explores] just how much skin color continues to frame the way we see each other--even in a post-race, Barack Obama-electing America. It's an early example of what will hopefully be an avalanche of smart, fearless work that brings the same fresh feel to the artistic conversation about race that is said to imbue today's politics." -Kai Wright, The Root

"The Shipment is f***ing brilliant." -B.B. Yates, Exeunt Magazine

LEAR
"In LEAR, Young Jean Lee's self-described 'inaccurate distortion' of the classic, she banishes the title monarch and Gloucester to the wings and focuses on the younger generation...The absurdist, meta-Shakespearean results are by turns irreverent, grotesque and morally harrowing...Lee is one of the most vital, rewarding playwrights to arrive on the scene in the past decade. LEAR has power and ought to endure." -David Cote, TimeOut New York

"Lee uses King Lear and some beautifully unconventional additions to flesh out Shakespeare's themes of loneliness, mortality and filial responsibility in gratifying and moving depth." -Sam Thielman, Variety

"Young Jean's LEAR is Shakespeare's rotated in four-dimensional space to reveal what is lost in most productions (ghastly, sentimental parodies for the most part--Bard shibboleths): the cold, hard claims of nothingness--the implacable something/nothing out of which we all come, and into which we vanish without a trace. The simple power of the work is terrific, often sardonic, always relentless; LEAR is certainly Lee's best work yet." -Mac Wellman


The Shipment
"Lee is a facetious provocateur; that is, she does whatever she can to get under our skin--with laughs and with raw, brutal talk...Lee makes her audience walk a knife's edge of race and meaning. How does blackness sound? And how have we been conditioned to hear black speech?...This is so ingenious a twist, such a radical bit of theatrical smoke and mirrors, that, in rethinking everything that has come before...we are forced to confront our own preconceived notions of race. And to agree with Lee that we may not live long enough to purge ourselves of them." -Hilton Als, New Yorker

"[The Shipment explores] just how much skin color continues to frame the way we see each other--even in a post-race, Barack Obama-electing America. It's an early example of what will hopefully be an avalanche of smart, fearless work that brings the same fresh feel to the artistic conversation about race that is said to imbue today's politics." -Kai Wright, The Root

"The Shipment is f***ing brilliant." -B.B. Yates, Exeunt Magazine

LEAR
"In LEAR, Young Jean Lee's self-described 'inaccurate distortion' of the classic, she banishes the title monarch and Gloucester to the wings and focuses on the younger generation...The absurdist, meta-Shakespearean results are by turns irreverent, grotesque and morally harrowing...Lee is one of the most vital, rewarding playwrights to arrive on the scene in the past decade. LEAR has power and ought to endure." -David Cote, TimeOut New York

"Lee uses King Lear and some beautifully unconventional additions to flesh out Shakespeare's themes of loneliness, mortality and filial responsibility in gratifying and moving depth." -Sam Thielman, Variety

"Young Jean's LEAR is Shakespeare's rotated in four-dimensional space to reveal what is lost in most productions (ghastly, sentimental parodies for the most part--Bard shibboleths): the cold, hard claims of nothingness--the implacable something/nothing out of which we all come, and into which we vanish without a trace. The simple power of the work is terrific, often sardonic, always relentless; LEAR is certainly Lee's best work yet." -Mac Wellman

About the Author

Young Jean Lee is the founder of the Young Jean Lee's Theater Company where she directs her own work. She has been invited to tour venues in Vienna, Hanover, Berlin, Switzerland, Brussels, Norway, France, Rotterdam, Portland, Seattle, Columbus, Pittsburgh and Minneapolis. She is the recipient of a 2007 Emerging Playwright OBIE Award.