Interview with a Playwright: Lauren Yee

The 2015 Season of Rough Readings is now in full swing, granting audiences the rare chance to see up-close and personal readings of new plays in early draft form. We're continuing with King of the Yees, a brilliant new work by playwright Lauren Yee. We were able to speak with her about her work and process, and she's shared some wonderful insight below:

Rachel Finkelstein: Thanks for your time! King of the Yees touches upon some of the issues you face as a woman of Chinese ancestry, and I know you're a Fellow at the Women’s Project Playwrights Lab and a member of the Ma-Yi Theatre Writers Lab. As a playwright, what do you most hope to communicate about the intersection of culture and gender as it appears in your work?

Lauren Yee: I love it when cultures smash up against one another and I can make connections between seemingly disparate communities. King of the Yees reflects that in spades for me. To me, this play is a parent-child story and all those questions and stories you sometimes forget to ask about. It's also about those contradictory feelings on where we come from--what we love, what we don't, all the strange and wonderful things that reflect who you are.

RF: How did you go about partnering with the Contemporary Drama Working Group at UC Berkeley on this work, and what does that partnership entail?

Lauren Yee

LY: Because King of the Yees  is set in San Francisco Chinatown and is very much a local story, I really wanted to find different ways of introducing King of the Yees  to the Bay Area, and I'd heard great things from other playwrights about working with Berkeley's Contemporary Drama Working Group.

So now I have the really great opportunity to hear the play out loud in the Bay Area two times in April. After the UC Berkeley reading, I'm looking forward to making some changes, and I'm also really looking forward to working with Dennis Yen, one of my lead actors in both readings. We previously worked together on the play at a workshop in North Carolina at UNC Chapel Hill.

RF: This play deals with a lot of surrealism and completely obliterates the fourth wall in the process -- what got you going in this direction?

LY: For me, King of the Yees starts from a very real, grounded place and explodes outwards as we and our protagonist go through the journey of the play. I love asking the question of "how is this theatrical?" It also reflects a general trajectory in my writing thus far--when I first began writing, I started from a place of heightened realism, big farce, and have gradually continued my exploration of what it means to be big and theatrical and formally inventive. I want to write plays that surprise me as I'm writing them, and hopefully that translates to a satisfying experience for an audience, too.

RF: From what I've seen, I'm sure it will! Now, your father plays a huge role in this work - what level of involvement did your father have in the creation of the play?

LY: Absolutely none! Though he definitely did have a lot of ideas about what the play should be about, which was particularly interesting when he suggested things that had actually made their way into the play already. And I think I'm a writer who's deeply invested in strong character voices, so hearing a strong voice for this play really helped me to jumpstart it more quickly than usual.

RF: It really shows in the work. Thank you so much for sharing, Lauren!

The Rough Reading Series is Pay What You Can, and continues with "King of the Yees" by Lauren Yee, playing April 20th at 7:30pm at 424 Santa Teresa, Stanford University, and April 21st at 7pm at the Tides Theatre, San Francisco. 

Read more about "King of the Yees", Lauren Yee, and the Rough Reading Series at  Playwrightsfoundation.org. Save a Seat with an RSVP! Email rsvp@playwrightsfoundation.org or call 415.626.2176.

*Member of Actor's Equity Association