BOMB 111/Spring 2010
ON NEWSSTANDS NOW
ON NEWSSTANDS NOW
Click here to watch a larger version of this video!
Young Jean Lee, a New York City–based playwright with her own internationally-touring company—Young Jean Lee’s Theater Company—won the 2007 OBIE Award for an emerging playwright. Her shows include The Shipment, Church, and Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven. Known for her provocative, disorienting spin on familiar subjects, she has taken on topics ranging from Asian-American identity politics to Evangelical Christianity. Describing her process, Lee has written, “When starting a play, I ask myself, ‘What’s the last play in the world I would ever want to write?’ Then I force myself to write it.” Lee has recently won grants from the Jerome Foundation, the Rockefeller MAP Foundation, the Greenwall Foundation, and the New York State Council on the Arts.
Lee is interviewed by Richard Maxwell, one of New York City’s most active and discussed playwrights. His “postdramatic” plays have been considered by the New York Times to be “hilarious and trenchant looks at American passivity.” The author and/or director of some 15 plays, his most recent work is Ode to the Man Who Kneels. Maxwell was interviewed in BOMB’s Fall 105 issue. Read it online now.
This Select Equity Series on Playwriting BOMBLive! was shot at Performance Space 122 in New York City, at the Mabou Mines rehearsal space. P.S. 122 is one of New York’s ultimate destinations for cutting-edge theatre, dance, music, live art and cross-media. Founded in 1979, Performance Space 122 is dedicated to supporting and presenting artists from NYC and around the world whose work challenges the traditional boundaries of live performance. For more information about P.S. 122, visit their website.
Watch BOMB’s web-exclusive conversation between Young Jean and Richard Maxwell.
Photography: Rob Lyons & Michael Lisnet
Sound: Derek Lloyd
Editing: Courtney Nicolson
(Video, Web Exclusives)