Special Topics in Drama

Young Jean Lee

Postmodernism &
Identity Politics

Jordan Sucher
4/23/15

Biography
Young Jean Lee was born in Daegu, South Korea in 1974. Her parents, James and InnSoo Lee, brought the family to Pullman, WA two years later so that James could pursue further
education in chemical engineering. Later on, Lee would credit her interest in theatre to the smalltown summer-stock theatre of Pullman. After leaving Pullman, Lee spent six years studying
English, specifically Shakespeare, and received both Bachelors and Doctorate degrees from UC
Berkeley. Partway through her time in Berkeley, Lee married aspiring law student Nicholas
Daum. In 2000, Daum was accepted to Yale Law School and the couple moved to New Haven.
At this point, Lee had already become unsatisfied with academia. She used New Haven as a way
to pivot toward a career in the theatre by contacting professors at the Yale School of Drama,
and asking them for suggestions, she became exposed to the downtown theatre scene of New
York City.
Only two short years later, Young Jean Lee was separated from her husband and pursuing
an MFA in playwriting at Brooklyn College. Initially, Lees writing was stifled by her thorough
education at UC Berkeley: she found herself writing derivative drama because of her internalized
beliefs about theatre. Lee eventually came to the head of the Playwriting program at Brooklyn
College, Mac Wellman, and confessed that she couldnt write plays as strong as those of her
artistic role models. He urged her to adjust her perspective instead of trying to write the best
play she could, Wellman suggested that she try to write the worst play possible. This suggestion
liberated Lee from the pressures she had been placing on herself, and allowed her to follow her
creative impulses without self-filtering.

In 2003, Lee began Young Jean Lees Theater Company, through which she has selfproduced ten plays in the last twelve years. In 2006, Lee achieved a breakthrough with her
quasi-biographical Songs of the Dragon Flying to Heaven the play was put up in New York,
Minneapolis, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and throughout Europe. From 2006 until 2013 she was one of
New Dramatists resident playwrights. She has also had residencies at both the Yaddo and
MacDowell retreat communities, and is a resident artist with the Wooster Group, among many
other distinctions. In 2013, Lee became not only a theatre artist but a musician as well
December saw the release of an album of music and spoken word entitled Were Gonna Die by
Lees new group, Future Wife. Throughout the last decade, Young Jean Lee has made a name for
herself as one of todays most adventurous and unflinching artists.

Selected Works
Young Jean Lees plays are all wildly distinct. She approaches each new project by
referring back to Mac Wellmans advice she asks herself what the last play she would write is,
and then proceeds to write it. This tactic means that each new work is a marked departure from
the last in terms of subject matter, style, or both. For analysis, consider these three Young Jean
Lee works: Pullman, WA, Church, and The Shipment. These plays differ in their style they
range from almost fully realistic to almost entirely abstract. They also differ in subject matter
Pullman, WA is a philosophical musing in three voices, Church is a piece which deconstructs
religion, and The Shipment is an exploration of the African American identity. Despite this, the
patchwork of Lees writing, when observed from a great enough distance, does reveal a fairly
consistent dramaturgy. Certain rhetorical tactics, themes, and attitudes are repeated. Each play

dabbles in immersion, bending but not breaking the fourth wall. Each play relies heavily on
music, for a variety of effects. On a more conceptual level, each play is about identity politics,
and about self-making. In some way, each piece seems to explore the notion of being lost, of
not knowing who you are or what you should be doing. Perhaps the most structural difference
between these plays is in how they feel about this uncertainty Church seems to advocate for
submission to it, Pullman, WA suggests that whatever a person does is what they should be
doing, and The Shipment proposes that, if you try hard enough, you can reclaim and determine
your own identity.
First, lets take a look at the stylistic differences between these plays. Pullman, WA (2005)
is the earliest and most abstract of the three, and can best be described as barren. It is specified
that the only set element is a corner with two chairs, where characters go when they have given
up. Additionally, there are no lighting or sound cues in the piece, and the house lights remain up
for the entire piece. This barrenness creates a sense of tension which is reinforced by the
relentless manner in which the play unfolds. Once characters enter, they remain on stage for the
duration of the show. The entire piece takes place in one unspecified location, as the three
characters directly address each other and the audience for ninety minutes without pause.
Church (2007) is the most concrete of the three pieces if Pullman, WA is barren, then
Church is overwhelmingly lush, with an abundance of sensory stimulation. The play is structured
as an actual church service, with the audience cast as the members of a congregation and the
actors as the clergy. This conceit enables the audience to know exactly what their relationship to
the show is, whereas in Pullman, WA, audience members were given no such perceptual
instructions. Church is bookended by overwhelming stimuli. It begins with the house lights

cutting out as an old hymnal seems to come from everywhere, overwhelming the audience with
its raw power. The ending features a sixty-person choir singing and clapping without restraint.
Between these overpowering bookends are elaborately extravagant images such as: a grand
spiral staircase that swings out to reveal a hidden room of magical treasures and swords, while
the worlds sweetest honey drips from ruby chandeliers and elopes everything before solidifying
into purest amber and rolling into the corners. Church unfolds more slowly than Pullman, WA,
but the fact that the piece is structured like a sermon grants it a driving rhythm that carries the
audience from beginning to end.
The Shipment (2009) falls somewhere between these two on the dimension of abstraction.
The piece, which is performed without intermission, is split into two distinct acts one stylized
like a minstrel variety show, the other written naturalistically. The characters and situations are
more concrete in The Shipment than in Pullman, WA for example, whereas in Pullman, WA we
are in the dark about the relationships between the characters, in The Shipment we see a mother
and son, a group of co-workers, and many other culturally recognizable relationships. On the
other hand, the characters and relationships in The Shipment are are more dynamic and less
consistent than in Church: this is evidenced most obviously by the fact that in Church, six actors
play six characters, and in The Shipment seven actors play twenty-seven characters. Finally, The
Shipment is the most structurally sophisticated of these plays, and is the only one which features
distinct acts.
While these plays are undoubtedly distinct, Young Jean Lee does have a variety of
signature rhetorical moves which seem to be present in all of these plays and in many of her
other work. One of these is a form of light immersion, where Lee writes into her scripts moments

in which the audience is acknowledged in some way. This is often done at or near the beginning
of a show as a method of bringing the audience into the world of the play, and making them
become emotionally and intellectually vulnerable. Pullman, WA begins with such a moment a
monologue which begins with the words: I see you out there. By directly addressing the
audience, and talking about them, the characters in Pullman, WA actively engage the audience.
Church does this in a slightly more subtle way early in the piece one of the pastors directly
addresses the audience, saying: Were all really excited to be in (Name of city), and wed like to
thank (Name of venue) for inviting us here and taking such good care of us. The pastor goes on
to ask the audience if they have any prayer requests, and the script has a written-in section where
the pastor actually takes prayer requests until there arent any more. The Shipment builds on this
tactic. The second scene of the play, which is written as a stand-up comedy routine, begins with
an announcer saying the name of the actual city in which the play is being produced, and then
asking the audience to put their hands together for Name of actor playing Stand-Up Comedian.
The script then has the stand-up comedian go on to make various local references, which must be
filled in by the creative team of a production.
Another tool which Lee frequently employs is music. Pullman, WA features only one
moment of music, in which the three characters sing vaguely asian sounding syllables together:
Hikk-en yaa, chunken yaa, moo-oo-kohh-oh-ko chunyeh. This serves as a single moment of
relief, the only part of the play in which the characters are not directly addressing the audience.
Church, The Shipment, and many of Young Jean Lees other works have much more music in
them, and frequently feature obscure or old songs. Church calls for four songs: Sherburne by
the Alabama Sacred Harp Singers, Bread by on!air!library!, Every Move I Make by Passion,

and the classic spiritual Aint Got Time to Die. The first song is a recording, the second two
are to be performed by the pastors, and the final spiritual is performed by the sixty-person choir.
The Shipment includes an even greater amount of existing music, calling for five specific songs:
F.N.T. by Semisonic, I dont Give a Fuck by Lil Jon, the theme song of the TV show Jem
and the Holograms, Dark Center of the Universe by Modest Mouse, and Ooh by Mary J.
Blige. The music in these plays is diverse, and serves a variety of purposes. At the most basic
level, Lee uses music to enable audiences to connect on a more emotional level with her work,
by drawing on the existing cultural significance of these songs. She also uses music to punctuate
her work, and to give audiences and actors a break from the discomfort of her experimental style.
These three plays are about very different subjects, yet there are common themes and
attitudes present in all of them that appear throughout Young Jean Lees work. The differences
are immediately apparent. Pullman, WA is about the stories we as people tell ourselves to get
through the day. The three characters in the play shift from being hopeful about the future to
being completely despondent. The entire action of the play consists of the characters trying, and
often failing, to maintain their optimism about life. The given circumstances of the play are very
minimal and vague. Church, on the other hand, is about the self-denial and guilt, but also the
beauty and hope of religion. The four pastors in that play pontificate about the evils of the ego,
and the wonders that lie in the afterlife. The Shipment is a deconstruction of the AfricanAmerican identity. The first half of the play was based on the stereotypes that the original cast
felt they had to deal with as black performers, whereas the second act was developed by asking
the cast to imagine roles that they always wanted to play.

The similarities are not as easily gleamed as the differences however, they can be found
in the shared conceptual framework that underlies all three of these plays. The central concept in
much of Young Jean Lees work, including these pieces, is identity. Identity, for Young Jean Lee,
might be defined as: the sum of who you are, what you care about, and what you do. Areas of
interest for the playwright include: how identity is constructed, whether it is permanent, whether
there is a true self or a false self, and how identity can limit or enable happiness. Pullman, WA
introduces the idea that not knowing your identity can cause anxiety, depression, and discomfort:
A lot of times in my life I have felt that I did not know what I was doing and that everything
was fucked up. The play elaborates, claiming that if you know who you are or what you should
be doing, then the feelings of anxiety go away: And during those times when I felt so unhappy
and confused, I would wish that someone would tell me what to do. That I could pick up a recipe
book, and it would be a recipe book for life, which would tell me what I should do to live a good
life and be happy. Church elaborates on this concept of identity, suggesting that perhaps trying
to understand your identity is wasted effort. This is clear from a parable told early in the play:
And the lord said to him, My child, open your eyes! Your world is as small as a speck of sand.
And the young man replied, I am complicated. I am deep. I am a good person. I am sufficient.
The Shipment further expands on the conceptual framework of identity, introducing the idea that
a persons identity is created not only that individual, but also by the culture he or she exists
within. In the initial stand-up comedy routine, the comedian gives an example of this: Anyone
who ever seen me do an interview know I dont talk the same way onstage that I do in real life. I
even been accused a plain a stereotype to cater to a white audience. Well, thats true, but mostly
I talk this way because Im fuckin terrified a black people! The very way that the comedian

talks and carries himself is a compromise between how he sees himself and how other people
will see him.
Each of these plays represents a step in the developmental journey of Young Jean Lees
thoughts on identity and identity politics. Pullman, WA takes the fairly straightforward stance
that whatever a person is doing or thinking, that is part of who they are and therefore, everyone
has a stable and concrete identity. Church complicates this, suggesting that focusing on identity
is an ego trip which distracts from more important, more prosocial activities such as charity, and
that surrendering to the ambiguity of your identity is a way in which you can find peace. The
Shipment is another stance on the issue altogether that, instead of surrendering to an
unanchored identity, you can try to be aware of the forces that act on your identity, so that you
can respond to them in an informed way. The way in which the play was constructed reveals this
belief: Young Jean Lee created the first act by asking her cast to explore the stereotypes which
externally affect them the forces which act on their identities. In this light, the second act,
based off of the original casts dream roles, can be seen as an informed response to those
stereotypes, and a re-claiming of those identities.

Critical Response
Young Jean Lees Ugly Feelings About Race And Gender, by Karen Shimakawa

This paper, which was published in the journal Women & Performance, examines Young
Jean Lees play Songs of the Dragon Flying to Heaven through the conceptual framework of
Ugly Feelings as developed by literary theoretician Sianne Ngai. According to Ngai, ugly

feelings are a category of emotions which are distinct from so-called major emotions, such as
anger, which lead to catharsis or action of some kind. Ugly feelings, such as envy or irritation,
are those which do not tend to culminate in a release. Shimakawa describes two of Ngais ugly
feelings and explores how they can be read in Songs of the Dragon Flying to Heaven. The two
feelings explored are animatedness and stuplimity. To be animated, according to Ngai, is to have
an excessive amount of liveliness with the underlying implication that a person who is
animated is both closer to nature and more sensitive to external forces. Shimakawa reads the
Koreans and the Korean-American in Songs of the Dragon Flying to Heaven as embodiments of
animatedness. This is apparent in the moments when their physicality is exaggerated to the point
of parody examples include when the characters mime horrific suicides, or dance in circles.
The second emotion explored, stuplimity, is defined as simultaneous boredom and astonishment.
Shimakawa sees this in the secondary plot of the white couple, who are somehow tired of each
other and yet permanently and inescapably stimulated by each other at the same time. The paper
advocates for a reading of Songs of the Dragon Flying to Heaven as an exploration of the limited
and restricted agency present throughout contemporary American culture.

Young Jean Lees Cruel Dramaturgy, by Patricia Ybarra

This paper, published in Modern Drama, contextualizes one of Young Jean Lees most
recent plays, Straight White Male, as part of a larger discussion on liberal and neoliberal
economics. Straight White Male is a naturalistic play which tells the story of a father and his
three sons while most of the men in the family have achieved success, one of the brothers,

Matt, seems to have almost no ambitions. To understand the play, Ybarra refers to a shift in
economics and government in the mid-twentieth century, one associated with the decline of the
welfare state, organized labour protections, and trade policies According to Ybarra, this shift
led to the development of the concept of human capital, and the idea that an individual should
treat his or her skill set as a form of capital which can be invested in and grown. The paper
suggests that Matts lack of ambition is a subversion of the value system of human capital. In
other words, Matt refuses to enact his privilege as a straight white male by rejecting the metrics
of success used under neoliberalism: self-expression, self-actualization, and being ones best
self. The implication of this paper is that Straight White Male can be read as a critique on
neoliberal forms of capital.
Artistic and Social Movements
Young Jean Lee, like any artist, exists at the intersection of a variety of movements.
However, the two which she contributes to most are the Asian American theatre movement and
the avant-garde and postmodern theatre movement. The Asian American theatre movement grew
out of the great number of Asian Americans who emigrated to the United States throughout the
twentieth century. Early Asian American dramatists were unsatisfied with the lack of opportunity
they faced, and set out to carve a cultural space for themselves through Asian-American theaters
and companies. Themes that have consistently run through the Asian-American theatre
movement include: the concept of the outsider, the construction of identities, and the processes
of assimilation. Asian-American dramatists have the responsibility of subverting existing myths
about the Asian-American identity, and of reclaiming what such an identity looks like.

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The postmodern theatre movement is an offspring of the larger postmodernist movement

of the mid-twentieth century. Postmodernism in general, is an ideology which criticizes the
objective ontology of modernism that is, postmodernism can be defined as the belief that all
truth is relative, and that any system which proposes a definite truth is actually a system of
domination. Postmodern theatre takes the same stance as many postmodern philosophers
instead of proposing conceptual frameworks or value systems, postmodernists deconstruct
existing frameworks and demonstrate how they serve existing power structures. Thus,
postmodern theatre emphasizes questions rather than answers, and revels in confusion as
opposed to clarity.
Young Jean Lees work is a marriage of these movements. She is both an Asian-American
and a postmodernist thinker. Her work examines the construct of racial and gendered identity,
and then proceeds to deconstruct it as yet another modernist illusion. She explores what it means
to be part of an out-group of Asian-Americans living among an in-group of white Americans, and
then goes on to deconstruct what the notions of in-group and out-group mean at a fundamental
level.

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Bibliography

Lee, Young Jean. Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven and Other Plays. New York: Theatre
Communications Group, 2009. Print.

Lee, Young Jean. The Shipment ; Lear. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2010. Print.

Patricia Ybarra. "Young Jean Lees Cruel Dramaturgy." Modern Drama 57.4 (2014): 513-533.
Project MUSE. Web. 22 Apr. 2015. <https://muse.jhu.edu/>

Shimakawa, Karen. "Young Jean Lee's Ugly Feelings About Race And Gender." Women &
Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 17.1 (2007): 89-102. Web.

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