NYC Playwright Young Jean Lee’s Outrageous Show about Ethnic Identity Comes to the Wexner Center

"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, playwright Young Jean Lee brings her extremely funny and delightfully rude breakthrough work Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven to the Wexner Center Performance Space January 26-28.

Uninterested in writing a cliché-ridden confessional drama about Korean American identity and life under the cloud of racism, Lee simultaneously alarms and disarms with causally delivered yet outrageous assertions. As insightful as it is inciting, the play addresses the touchy topic of race head-on. Lee opens the play with the 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." 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 (the production’s subtitle is “a show about white people in love”).

Throughout it all, Lee keeps the audience exquisitely off balance with sharp, equal- opportunity swipes at any and all—and offers a bruised bit of hope, too. American Theatre magazine called it “provocative, offensive, smart and very funny.” This marks Young Jean Lee’s Columbus debut. A Q & A with Young Jean Lee and her ensemble will be held after each performance.

Tickets are $16 general public, $13 Wexner Center members, and $10 students, and available now at the Wexner Center (614 292-3535) and Ticketmaster (614 431-3600).

ABOUT YOUNG JEAN LEE

Writer/director Young Jean Lee has directed her plays at such New York venues as the HERE Arts Center (where she is a resident artist), P.S. 122, and the Ontological-Hysteric Theater. Lee is the 2006 recipient of grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Rockefeller Multi-Arts Production Foundation, and the Greenwall Foundation. Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven is on an international tour, stopping at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, and Berlin’s Hebbel Theater.

For more information, visit Young Jean Lee online at myspace.com/youngjeanlee.

EVENT SUPPORT

Produced by HERE Arts Center.

Major support for the Wexner Center’s 2006–07 performing arts season is generously provided by Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, The Columbus Foundation, and Huntington Bank.

Significant contributions are also made by Altria Group, Inc., Morgan Stanley, and Nationwide Foundation.

Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven is made possible in part by a grant from the National Performance Network’s Performance Residency Program.

Major contributors of the National Performance Network include the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Ford Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency), Altria and the Nathan Cummings Foundation.

Additional season funding is provided by the Ohio Arts Council, the Corporate Annual Fund of the Wexner Center Foundation, and Wexner Center members.

Accommodations are provided by The Blackwell Inn.

CALENDAR INFORMATION DESCRIPTION: Columbus debut of Young Jean Lee’s Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven, an outrageous send up of racial stereotypes.

DATES: January 26-27 at 8 pm and January 28 at 7 pm.

LOCATION: Wexner Center Performance Space, 1871 North High Street at 15th Avenue at The Ohio State University. Parking in Ohio Union Garage just south.

TICKETS: $16 general public, $13 Wexner Center members, and $10 students.

TICKET OUTLETS: Wexner Center Ticket Office (614 292-3535) and Ticketmaster (614 431- 3600) or Ticketmaster.com. PUBLIC INFORMATION: wexarts.org or 614 292-3535