New Downtown Now: An Anthology Of New Theater From Downtown New York

At a time when most serious drama being written and produced for the American stage aspires only to mainstream acceptance and high-toned mediocrity, an innovative new generation of playwrights based in New York City has emerged, crafting works that challenge and undermine the conventional structure, language, and characterization of commercial theater while rejecting outdated notions of the avant-garde. New Downtown Now brings together ten new works that exemplify the playfulness, excitement, and possibilities of the theater. Characterized by fragmenting structure, hypnotic rhythms, kaleido-scopic imagery, unpredictable characters, and lyrical language, these plays resemble puzzles from which the writers are teasing revelations. Though disparate in subject matter and style, with characters ranging from a sushi chef to a soldier and settings from a taxicab to a live television broadcast, these highly original plays share a commitment to formal experimentation that places them beyond the psychological clichés of the majority and the cold condescension of postmodernism. The anthology includes Interim by Barbara Cassidy; Tragedy: a tragedy by Will Eno; Nine Come by Elana Greenfield; Shufu-Sachiko and Enoshima Island by Madelyn Kent; The Appeal by Young Jean Lee; The Vomit Talk of Ghosts by Kevin Oakes; Ajax (por nobody) by Alice Tuan; Apparition, an uneasy play of the underknown by Anne Washburn; Demon Baby by Erin Courtney.Mac Wellman is the author of numerous plays and the recipient of three Obie awards, most recently in 2003 for lifetime achievement. He is professor of playwriting at Brooklyn College. Young Jean Lee is a playwright and director, and member of the Obie award-winning company 13P. Jeffrey M. Jones is a playwright and curator of the Obie award-winning Little Theater at Tonic in New York.

Literature & Fiction

Lee, Young Jean

Wellman, Mac

Dramas & Plays

Univ. of Minnesota Press

At a time when most serious drama being written and produced for the American stage aspires only to mainstream acceptance and high-toned mediocrity, an innovative new generation of playwrights based in New York City has emerged, crafting works that challenge and undermine the conventional structure, language, and characterization of commercial theater while rejecting outdated notions of the avant-garde. New Downtown Now brings together ten new works that exemplify the playfulness, excitement, and possibilities of the theater. Characterized by fragmenting structure, hypnotic rhythms, kaleido-scopic imagery, unpredictable characters, and lyrical language, these plays resemble puzzles from which the writers are teasing revelations. Though disparate in subject matter and style, with characters ranging from a sushi chef to a soldier and settings from a taxicab to a live television broadcast, these highly original plays share a commitment to formal experimentation that places them beyond the psychological clichés of the majority and the cold condescension of postmodernism. The anthology includes Interim by Barbara Cassidy; Tragedy: a tragedy by Will Eno; Nine Come by Elana Greenfield; Shufu-Sachiko and Enoshima Island by Madelyn Kent; The Appeal by Young Jean Lee; The Vomit Talk of Ghosts by Kevin Oakes; Ajax (por nobody) by Alice Tuan; Apparition, an uneasy play of the underknown by Anne Washburn; Demon Baby by Erin Courtney.Mac Wellman is the author of numerous plays and the recipient of three Obie awards, most recently in 2003 for lifetime achievement. He is professor of playwriting at Brooklyn College. Young Jean Lee is a playwright and director, and member of the Obie award-winning company 13P. Jeffrey M. Jones is a playwright and curator of the Obie award-winning Little Theater at Tonic in New York.

Straight White Men

Dramatist's Play Service

Full Length Drama / Acclaimed playwright and director Young Jean Lee transforms her life-long struggle with Christianity into an exuberant church service. Both celebratory and confrontational, CHURCH will test the expectations of religious and non-religious alike-looking deep into why we believe what we believe. (Cast: 1 man, 3 women)

Church

Exceeds maximum length of 2000 characters; The Methuen Drama Book of New American Plays is an anthology of six outstanding plays from some of the most exciting playwrights currently receiving critical acclaim in the States. It showcases work produced at a number of the leading theatres during the last decade and charts something of the extraordinary range of current playwriting in America. It will be invaluable not only to readers and theatergoers in the U.S., but to those around the world seeking out new American plays and an insight into how U.S. playwrights are engaging with their current social and political environment. There is a rich collection of distinctive, diverse voices at work in the contemporary American theatre and this brings together six of the best, with work by David Adjmi, Marcus Gardley, Young Jean Lee, Katori Hall, Christopher Shinn and Dan LeFranc. The featured plays range from the intimate to the epic, the personal to the national and taken together explore a variety of cultural perspectives on life in America. The first play, David Adjmi's Stunning, is an excavation of ruptured identity set in modern day Midwood, Brooklyn, in the heart of the insular Syrian-Jewish community; Marcus Gardley's lyrical epic The Road Weeps, The Well Runs Dry deals with the migration of Black Seminoles, is set in mid-1800s Oklahoma and speaks directly to modern spirituality, relocation and cultural history; Young Jean Lee's Pullman, Wa deals with self-hatred and the self-help culture in her formally inventive three-character play; Katori Hall's Hurt Village uses the real housing project of "Hurt Village" as a potent allegory for urban neglect set against the backdrop of the Iraq war; Christopher Shinn's Dying City melds the personal and political in a theatrical crucible that cracks open our response to 9/11 and Abu Graib, and finally Dan LeFranc's The Big Meal, an inter-generational pl

The Methuen Drama Book of New American Plays

Shinn, Christopher

Hall, Katori

Adjmi, David

Gardley, Marcus

LeFranc, Dan

Bloomsbury Methuen Drama

'Post-black' refers to an emerging trend within black arts to find new and multiple expressions of blackness, unburdened by the social and cultural expectations of blackness of the past and moving beyond the conventional binary of black and white. 
Reflecting this multiplicity of perspectives, the plays in this collection explode the traditional ways of representing black families on the American stage, and create new means to consider the interplay of race, with questions of class, gender, and sexuality. They engage and critique current definitions of black and African-American identity, as well as previous limitations placed on what constitutes blackness and black theatre.
Written by the emerging stars of American theatre such as Eisa Davis and Marcus Gardley, the plays explore themes as varied as family and individuality, alienation and gentrification, and reconciliation and belonging. They demonstrate a wide-range of formal and structural innovations for the American theatre, and reflect the important ways in which contemporary playwrights are expanding the American dramatic canon with new and diverse means of representation. 
Edited by two leading US scholars in black drama, Harry J. Elam Jr (Stanford) and Douglas A. Jones Jr (Princeton), this cutting edge anthology gathers together some of the most exciting new American plays, selected by a rigorous academic backbone and explored in depth by supporting critical material.

The Methuen Drama Book of Post-black Plays (Play Anthologies)

Gurira, Danai

Anderson, Christina

O'Hara, Robert

Davis, Eisa

Brooks, J. Nicole

Salter, Nikkole

Son, Diana

Methuen Drama

"Have you ever noticed how most Asian Americans are slightly brain- damaged from having grown up with Asian parents?" begins the Korean American protagonist of Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven, the singular work by Young Jean Lee. This is the first collection by the downtown writer-director, whose explorations of stereotypes of race, gender, and religion are unflinchingand seat-squirming funny. This volume includes the following plays: Songs of the Dragon Flying to Heaven Scathingly mischievousSongs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven is a provocateur's funny, guns-blazing take on the utter banality of ethnic stereotypes and other cross-cultural outrages. In its slyly eccentric way, it's an evening of enlightenment.” Peter Marks, Washington Post Part performance art, part comic sketches, fights, dance, song and reverse Bible study,’ and at times strangely serious, Dragons is a bracingly funnyalways provocative equal-opportunity offender.” Robert Hurwitt, San Francisco Gate Miss Lee has a talent for evocative and sometimes grotesque imagery, and on the attack she is at the height of her powers.” New York Times Church I will happily worship in the house of Young Jean Lee.” David Cote, TimeOut New York A thoroughly entertaining, uplifting, inescapable piece of artSo thought provoking, it's only appropriate to give thanks and praise.” Helen Shaw, The New York Sun Pullman, WA "[Lee’s] new work has the deadpan simplicity of the plays of Richard Maxwell and the awkward, secretly suffering angst of a teenage diarist working through an identity crisis. It is an honest [work] that takes itself seriously, and that is refreshing." -Jason Zinoman, New York Times The Appeal "The Appeal is the happiest literary desecration since Amy Freed's The Bard of Avon, in which Shakespeare declared, I have great thought-like things within my head.’” -Jeremy McCarter, The New York Sun Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals Lee is a queen of unease; chuckles never come unaccompanied by squirms.” Village Voice Yaggoo A rising star of the downtown theatre scene.” New York Times Young Jean Lee has written and directed shows in New York with Young Jean Lee’s Theater Company and toured her work to over twenty cities around the world. Her plays include Straight White Men, We’re Gonna Die, Untitled Feminist Show, The Shipment, Lear and Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven. Awards include two Obies, the Festival Prize of the Zuercher Theater Spektakel, a Prize in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Doris Duke Artist Award.

Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven and Other Plays

Theatre Communications Group

Lee's way of subverting expectations leaves us questioning our own latent assumptions and desires about theatre, race, death and entertainment. She understands and exploits the unique strengths of her medium: the ability to viscerally connect with an audience.” The Economist Experimental Korean American theatre artist Young Jean Lee has been called one of the best experimental playwrights in America” (Time Out New York). This volume contains two of her recent works: In The Shipment, Lee provides a provocative look at African-American identity in our not-yet post-racial society. The New York Times calls this take on cultural images of black America a subversive, seriously funny new theater piece Ms. Lee wields sharp, offbeat humor to point up the clichés, distortions and absurdities” (Charles Isherwood, New York Times). LEAR is Lee’s own version of Shakespeare’s tragedy, focusing on the king’s three daughters. A production in which Lear himself never appears, LEAR is a wacky blend of To be or not to be,’ Beckett, and Pirandellofull of exhilarating, illuminating moments” (Village Voice). Young Jean Lee has written and directed shows in New York with Young Jean Lee’s Theater Company and toured her work to over twenty cities around the world. Her plays include Straight White Men, We’re Gonna Die, Untitled Feminist Show, The Shipment, Lear and Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven. Awards include two Obies, the Festival Prize of the Zuercher Theater Spektakel, a Prize in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Doris Duke Artist Award.

The Shipment and Lear

We're Gonna Die

"Ms. Lee's fascinating play . . . goes far beyond cheap satire, ultimately becoming a compassionate and stimulating exploration of one man's existential crisis . . . She proves unexpectedly adept at strict naturalism . . . [A] mournful and inquisitive play."—New York Times
"She sacrifices nothing; bodies, voices, jokes, food, tragedy, cities are all artistic fodder, as are her various selves and the mirthful, bloody life of her imagination."—New Yorker
Provocative playwright Young Jean Lee lends her shrewd perspective to this atypical take on the family drama. A father and his three sons unite and unravel, both aware of and undone by privilege and its pressure. When inherent social expectation conflicts with a desire to remain stagnant, the resulting identity confusion is new territory for the tightknit family. Strikingly observant and curiously drawn, Lee departs from her experimental style to create a naturalistic observation of the most socially unobstructed of our species, the straight white male.
Young Jean Lee has been hailed as "one of the best experimental playwrights in America" by Time Out New York. She has written and directed nine shows in New York with Young Jean Lee's Theater Company and toured her work to over twenty cities around the world. Her other plays include We're Gonna Die, Untitled Feminist Show, The Shipment, Lear and Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven. Awards include two Obies, the Festival Prize of the Zuercher Theater Spektakel, a Prize in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Doris Duke Artist Award.

Straight White Men / Untitled Feminist Show

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