Lear
Lee's boldest work to date—a radical and moving response to King Lear. Posing herself a new set of challenges, Lee turns from social themes to psychological ones and from satire to tragedy, asking the question of whether a contemporary audience can be made to experience catharsis. Lee causes a collision between Shakespeare's text and the most candid elements of her own life, pushing the concept of tragic irony as far as she can take it. The result: a laugh-out-loud tragedy about despair, the end of life, and familial piety that challenges our love of watching terrible things and tests the limits of our sympathy. Nothing can protect you from nothing.
Cast Requirements
2 men
3 women
Honors
The Shipment and Lear (Theatre Communications Group, 2010).
Press
"[Lee] banishes the title monarch and Gloucester to the wings and focuses on the younger generation . . . The absurdist, meta-Shakespearean results are by turns irreverent, grotesque and morally harrowing . . . Lee is one of the most vital, rewarding playwrights to arrive on the scene in the past decade . . . [LEAR] has power and ought to endure."
— Time Out New York
Production and Development History
Workshops: LMCC Swing Space (2009), Soho Rep Studio (2009).
Production: Soho Rep (2010).