Young Jean Lee Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven

"Young Jean Lee's hysterically funny Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven is perfect...politically incorrect...directed brilliantly."--New York Times

Named one of "New York's finest emerging playwrights," by the Village Voice, Young Jean Lee has created a breakthrough work with this extremely funny and delightfully rude tour de force.

Tickets are going fast. Call now. Please join us immediately following the performance for a Q and A with the artists. As insightful as it is inciting, Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven addresses the touchy topic of race head-on. Uninterested in writing a cliche-ridden confessional drama about Korean American identity and life under the cloud of racism, she simultaneously alarms and disarms with causally delivered yet outrageous assertions. (Here's the opening line: "Have you ever noticed how most Asian-Americans are slightly brain-damaged from having grown up with Asian parents?" She goes on to conclude that some American men "like that retarded quality.")

Setting the action in motion is Lee's assimilated alter ego who gives voice to minority rage ("You may laugh now," she says, "but remember my words when you and your offspring are writhing under our yoke.") while wrestling with her own identity quandaries. Also swirling in the play's colliding orbits are a trio of traditionally dressed Korean women who heap scorn on her wayward, Westernized ways and a dysfunctional, relationship-obsessed white couple who offer their own awkward interventions. Throughout it all, Lee keeps you exquisitely off balance with sharp, equal-opportunity swipes at any and all...and offers everyone a bruised bit of hope, too.