Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Preview: The Shipment



Award-winning Young Jean Lee’s Theatre Company (U.S.) comes to Harbourfront Centre with THE SHIPMENT, as part of World Stage from May 9-12, 2012 at the Enwave Theatre. Young Jean Lee, a rising star of American theatre, dissects what it means to be black in America in this hilarious and shocking play.

“Ingenious . . . radical.” - New Yorker

“A fiendishly funny piece of neominstrelsy.” – Time Out New York

Brazenly theatrical and transcendentally lyrical, THE SHIPMENT starts with a stand up comedy act and moves from the urban dreams of would-be rappers to the sitcom realism of yuppie domesticity, proving that nothing is ever as it seems. With an ending guaranteed to leave jaws hanging, this is contemporary theatre at its biggest, boldest and most daring.

Young Jean Lee, a Korean-American playwright raises questions about race in an entertaining and unique way.  Referred to as “the most adventurous downtown playwright of her generation” by New York Times, Lee has a unique approach to playwriting: she starts a play by asking herself, “What’s the last play in the world I would ever want to write?” THE SHIPMENT stars a cast of five black actors, who developed this provocative play in collaboration with Lee.

The playwright was also a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for THE SHIPMENT in 2010 and recently named as one of the inaugural Doris Duke Artists. Young Jean Lee is a 2011 Guggenheim Fellow, and was named by American Theatre magazine as one of the 25 artists who will shape the American theatre over the next 25 years.

Young Jean Lee’s Theater Company is an Obie Award-winning New York-based company that has creates and produces performances written and directed by Lee in collaboration with company members from diverse backgrounds, since 2003. Their work challenges audiences to think, rather than reaffirm their pre-existing beliefs. Lee 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.  The company’s most recent work is the hugely successful THE UNTITLED FEMINIST SHOW, which The New Yorker described as, “one of the more moving and imaginative works I have ever seen on the American stage.”

Performance details:

Wednesday, May 9, 2012: 8pm
Thursday, May 10, 2012: 8pm
Friday, May 11, 2012: 8pm
Saturday, May 12, 2012: 8pm

Enwave Theatre, 231 Queens Quay West, Toronto

Performance is 90 minutes with no intermission.
THE SHIPMENT contains strong language and content some may find offensive.
Click here for ticket info or call 416.973.4000.

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