Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven
Race, culture, identity and Monty Python
Our multicultural era has a set of taboos all its own. The author and director Young Jean Lee, a young Korean-American performing artist, tackles them harshly and provocatively, with a sense of humour worthy of Monty Python.
Her worst nightmare was to create a piece about her Korean-American identity, with a flowery, Asian-sounding title – so she did just that. In Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven she subjects her cultural heritage to close examination. She makes no attempt to avoid difficult questions of race, culture and identity, giving answers that lack all political correctness but are brutally honest and quite bonkers.
The six performers present a piece somewhere between dance and stand-up comedy, vaudeville and drama, and a multimedia performance. And if there is one thing she makes clear in her salient story of racial identity, it is that this is a complex and unavoidable topic.
The prologue to a show about white people in love titled "Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven" written & directed by Young Jean Lee with video by Dean Moss premiering at the Here Art Center, NYC September 21 - October 14, 2006.
Note: the first four minutes of video are sound only.
text & direction Young Jean Lee
choreography & video Dean Moss
featuring Brian Bickerstaff, Juliana Francis, Haerry Kim, Jun Sky Kim, Jennifer Lim, Becky Yamamoto
set & lights Eric Dyer
sound James McElhinney
costumes Colleen Werthmann
stage management Pamela Salling
associate set designer / technical director David Morris
associate lighting designer / lighting supervisor Juliet Chia
tour producer Barbara Hogue
production HERE Arts Center, Young Jean Lee’s Theater Company
originally developed at HERE Art Center (through the HERE Artist Residency Program (HARP))
