Playwright Kimber Lee experiments with a variety of styles, techniques and forms in scripts that pulse like a musical score. Subtle in her use of pauses, she finds the pattern, shape and rhythm of people’s thoughts, and how energy vibrates in the space of unfinished sentences. Whether she’s examining the life of an aging sushi chef in Tokyo, the death of a young man in Brooklyn, the mother of Saddam Hussein, Vincent Van Gogh in Paris (a period for which no letters exist), or drawing from her own experiences as a Korean American raised in rural Idaho, her formal curiosity flows around the edges, looking for the unexpected crack in whatever seems familiar. In her theatre-making process she grapples with the complexity of the theatrical exchange in the context of live performance, questioning the uses of narrative and meaning-making in the traditionally white spaces of the American theatre.

photo: Ineke de Lange