Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven and Other Plays

by Young Jean Lee

“Bold, unguarded work . . . that resists pat definition. [Young Jean] Lee has penned profane lampoons of motivational bromides ( Pullman, WA ) and the Romantic poets ( The Appeal ). Now she piles her deconstructive scorn upon ethnic stereotypes in Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven , a sweet-and-sour parade of Asian minstrelsy.”— Time Out New York “A perverse, provocative, and very funny festival of racism . . . Songs offers not only chauvinistic monologues and ass-slapping Korean dances, but also a rigorous exploration of art-making and its associated terrors.”— The Village Voice “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 of Young Jean Lee, whose plays are like nothing you have ever seen or read. This is the first collection by the downtown writer-director, whose explorations of stereotypes of race, gender, and religion are unflinching—and seat-squirming funny. Also includes Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals ; The Appeal ; Pullman, WA ; Church ; and Yaggoo . Young Jean Lee was born in Korea and moved to the United States at age two. She grew up in Pullman, Washington, and attended college at the University of California, Berkeley, where she also studied Shakespeare in the English PhD program before moving to New York. She is the founder of the Young Jean Lee’s Theater Company, where she directs her own work, and has toured internationally in Vienna, Hanover, Berlin, Switzerland, Brussels, Norway, France, and Rotterdam; and across the United States in Portland, Seattle, Pittsburgh, and Minneapolis. She is the recipient of a 2007 Emerging Playwright OBIE Award.

Genres: Plays, Drama, Theatre, Race, American, School

217 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 1, 2008

Reviews

[nya rowe · Rating 4 out of 5]

most interesting and bizarre piece of literature i have ever read. despite that, i loved the self-awareness in certain parts, the meta moments, and how none of it made sense at all yet did make sense at the same time. the racial animosity being one i could relate to on a personal level as a young jamaican and puerto rican woman.

: ̗̀➛ “i wish i could be in love. that is what i wish. and it is all so sad, it is all so sad and i can’t access the feeling. i can’t access the deep sad feeling that will enable me to say what i must say to you…”

[Craig Werner · Rating 4 out of 5]

To respond adequately to these six short plays, I'd need to see them performed. One was originally produced at the Ontological-Hysterical Theater in New York, a venue I've gone to many times and which has taught me that what matters is less the words not he page than the way they're activated. As reading texts, Young Jean Lee's plays strike me as erratic, alternating between really sharp and funny engagement with contemporary problems of identity--especially as it revolves around race, culture and gender--and fairly turgid seeming post-modernist set pieces; she was in the PhD program in English at Berkeley and I found myself on more than a few occasions recoiling a bit from seminar speak. BUT....I can imagine ways of bringing the texts--more often than not written in the form of extended monologs--alive, so I'm giving the plays the benefit of the doubt with the four stars. And several of them--especially Church and the title play, Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven--worked well for me as it is. Songs is a hilarious and deadly serious set of riffs on the tensions between Korean, Korean American and "white"--Lee's clearly aware of the flattening entailed in the term--cultural stereotypes.

In a critical essay following the plays, Jeffrey Jones, not really one of my favorite figures in downtown NY theater, writes that Lee sets out to write the "worst" plays she can imagine as a way of freeing herself from internal censorship, of letting herself write the things that would otherwise be taboo. That does account for some of the donnas--the play written around a gaggle of utterly and intentionally unhistorical romantic poets (Wordsworth, Byron, etc.) But Jones seems to think that's a recent discovery--it's a bit as if he's never heard of Brecht, which of course he has. Yes, Lee is destabilizing our notions of well made plays with uplifting endings and consistent characters; yes, she wants to force us to respond in unconventional ways. But that's been a main current of theater for fifty years. It's not fair to blame Jones' special pleading on Lee, but it does make me worry a bit more about the seminar speak element--the notion that the complexity of identity and the untrustworthiness of aesthetic convention is a late 20th or early 21st century discovery. Still, I'd have to see the plays produced to be confident of my response.

For now, I'll highly recommend the title play, and withhold recommendations on the larger body of her work.

[William · Rating 3 out of 5]

expect to be uncomfortable. Young Jean Lee's specialty lies in the "Theater of the Discomfort" -- the real treat is experiencing one of her plays in person!

[Grace Leneghan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read The Appeal in 2017. Interesting that a whole scene was just the three main characters hallucinating on opium and masturbating furiously.
Read Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven in 2020. Kinda loved it, kinda hated it. M favorite part is the chaotic scene set to Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas” where the Koreans and the Korean-American scuttle around and mime different ways you can commit gruesome suicide.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven is a raucous and excruciatingly cutthroat comedy skewering race on the page—in person, could really fly to heaven, I imagine.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

The critical essay at the end helped frame the plays for me - I would recommend reading that first.

[Scott · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think the style makes this book a better performance than reading. I would be interested to see it staged, but I am not going to be directing it any time soon because it's not my story to tell.

[Rusty · Rating 3 out of 5]

lee has some VERY sharp commentary about asian american identity and anti-asian racism but lots of these plays were way over my head.

[Phanesia Pharel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gut punch - genius

[eve · Rating 5 out of 5]

sort of obsessed with this theatre of discomfort thing

[David Li · Rating 5 out of 5]

What everything everywhere all at once wanted to be

[Vito · Rating 4 out of 5]

Is this postmodern narrative?

I wish I could see one of these plays performed... My imagination of them could be very different from how they were performed.

[Jaka]

I only read Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven for a theatre history class but there was no way to log it separately.

[toots · Rating 4 out of 5]

i can say i’m a bit obsessed i really liked many of the plays and they resonated with me

[J · Rating 3 out of 5]

Something about this play that I love: The TRUENESS of some things the Korean American says ("Like the fact that the reason why so many white men dare Asian women is that they can get better-looking Asian women than they can get white women because we are easier to get and have lower self-esteem.")

Something about this play that is better seen than read: ALL the scenes of physicality (the ass-slapping and dancing, the pantomimed suicides, the slapping video at the beginning). They are much more effective live, because reading a several-paragraph description of Koreans running around is confusing and dull, dull, dull.

Something about this play that baffled me: The white people, and why they are included at all.

The short summary: insight into Lee's identity issues and self-loathing, difficult to watch at times, but the white characters (and the fact that the play concludes with them) is incomprehensible and ultimately makes the play less effective.

[Jenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

I only read the title play but I'm intrigued enough to the extent where I'd love to find time to read the others. My reaction was initially: WTF. WTFFFFFF did I just read?? It read more like art than an actual play and I think that's what compelled me to give it as high of a rating as I did. Also, the playwright somehow captured so many insights that I uncomfortably recognized in my own life and overall she has a great sense for making all of these observations that are very true that nobody has the audacity to point out. Yet somehow she really did manage to capture a kind of desperate frustration onto the page and for the amount of incoherent confusion in this play, I think I really appreciate it.

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

This has a lot of similarities to the absurdities of Eastern European surrealist fiction that I love so much. I saw Young speak at ODU and bought her books immediately after. I asked her if there was a way I could view the DVDs she showed during her presentation and she gave them to me. I think of the line in Ferdydurke about the boy who is infatuated with the real live farm hand. It's symbol after symbol pounded into your brain, oversimplified, which is so satisfyingly funny that I adore about these works. "Church" is my favorite. And what I love most is that there are lines in each play that are verbatimly repeated. This is great stuff, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who doesn't have an appreciation for the avant-guard.

[Ben · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't quite know what to think after reading 'Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven.' It was the only one of the plays in the collection I read, since that was the one required for the dramaturgy class I'm taking. The play is highly abstract, extremely violent, and utterly random and confusing. Judging the stage directions for the opening of house, she is definitely trying to make the audience feel uncomfortable and unsure of themselves. Mostly, I was just confused and not a little bit disgusted by what was going on in the play. This is, of course, not necessarily a bad thing. I just felt like I was missing the point, and that I wasn't getting much out of the play.

[Jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Young Jean Lee's work. She's got a very unique touch to play writing full of fourth-wall breaking, audience intimidating, and characters that make wide comments in small amounts of dialogue.

[cyrus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pullman WA, my beloved