THEATER

The Shipment

Written and directed by Young Jean Lee
Performed by Young Jean Lee's Theater Company
Join Young Jean Lee for a conversation following each performance

Recommended for mature audiences.

“Cultural images of black America are tweaked, pulled and twisted like Silly Putty” –The New York Times

Are we really living in a postracial America? A provocative and seriously funny new performance from one of the country’s best experimental playwrights aims to find out. Young Jean Lee challenged herself, as a Korean American, to create theater about black American identity. The resulting work, The Shipment, challenges audiences to confront their own preconceived notions of race. Ranging from minstrel-like song and dance to stand-up comedy in the spirit of Richard Pryor to a short, comedic play, this sharp and irreverent piece of theater skewers African-American stereotypes. Raising pointed questions as she provokes wicked laughs, Lee finds the best approach to driving home the point “is not to wag a finger but to wink and smile.” (New York Times)

Post-performance Discussion
Following each performance, Young Jean Lee sits down with Christina Knight and Christine Mok to discuss our contemporary understanding of race in art and popular culture. Knight is a doctoral candidate in African and African American Studies at Harvard University whose current research focuses on representations of the Middle Passage in contemporary American visual art and performance. Mok is a dramaturg and scholar and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in theater and performance studies at Brown University exploring antitheatricality in contemporary Asian American performance.

MORE INFO

Artist Statement and Bio>>

Reading List>>

REVIEWS
"By the Skin of Our Teeth," Hilton Als, The New Yorker

LINKS
www.youngjeanlee.org

VIDEO

The Shipment was co-commissioned by the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University (World Premiere, October 2008) and The Kitchen (NYC Premiere, January 2009). This work has also been developed with support from the Rockefeller MAP Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, The Greenwall Foundation, The Tobin Foundation, and the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency. With residency support from Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Collapsable Hole, IRT Theater, MacDowell Colony, New Dramatists, Orchard Project, and Yaddo. Production design support provided by The Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation.

The Shipment is also made possible in part by a grant from the Ford Foundation and the Association of Performing Arts Presenters Ensemble Theatre Collaborations Grant Program.