Theatrical Border Crossings: Stereotypes against Realism in the Plays of Young Jean Lee

Abstract

This chapter examines two plays by Korean-American playwright and director Young Jean Lee: Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven (2006) and The Shipment (2009). In both plays, Lee leverages the contrast between stereotype and realist characterization, highlighting the ways in which theatrical form solicits modes of spectatorship that in turn reinforce racial boundaries. The author demonstrates the ways in which Lee’s work continues an established lineage of late-twentieth century performance scholars and theatre artists who self-consciously appropriate racial stereotypes in order to negate their ideological power on the one hand, while on the other addressing the pitfalls of a politics of representation that insists on “truthful” portrayals of minorities. Drawing on Henry Giroux’s theory of “border pedagogy,” the author shows the ways in which Lee mobilizes the audience’s perceptions of race across the theatrical border rather than attempt to “accurately” depict migrant subjects onstage.