Cleveland Play House to Present Regional Premiere of THE GREAT LEAP Beginning This Month

Cleveland Play House will present The Great Leap, a fast-paced, historically rooted sports drama written by Lauren Yee. Directed by Esther Jun, this suspenseful show will run from October 29 to November 20, 2022 in The Outcalt Theatre, located in the heart of Playhouse Square. The second production of CPH's 107th season, The Great Leap features actors Eric Cheung, Amanda Kuo, David Mason, and Reuben Uy. Tickets can be purchased at clevelandplayhouse.com.

An American college basketball team travels from San Francisco to Beijing in 1989 for a "friendship game" against a Chinese squad. Far from friendly, the matchup quickly becomes a high-stakes battle, as the American coach fights for his reputation and his Chinese counterpart fights for his life. Caught in the middle, a young Chinese American player must prove his mettle on the court while unravelling a long-kept secret. Cultures and generations clash in this kinetic, darkly comic basketball story.

Set against the backdrop of the Tiananmen Square uprising and massacre, the play's suspenseful athletic matchups mirror the sociopolitical tensions rising just beyond the court, presenting a compelling examination of what it takes to make a stand, and the sacrifices we're willing to make to do so. The American squad arrives in Beijing amidst the aftershocks of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, as the Cold War enters its final years. It's a setting which provokes prescient questions about the many forms revolution can take, and the cost, and reward, of speaking truth to power. As party pressures and desperation intensify, this "friendship game" takes on life or death consequences, and the coaches and players weigh the price of caution over courage, asking themselves when it is their turn to take their shot.

Published in 2018, The Great Leap was originally developed by the Denver Center for the Performing Arts Theatre Company. It made its New York premiere in 2018 at the Atlantic Theatre Company, and has since been performed at numerous regional theatres, including Steppenwolf Theatre, Portland Center Stage, and the Guthrie Theater.

Playwright Lauren Yee found the inspiration for the suspenseful play close to home. Yee's father made his name on the asphalt courts and rec center gyms of San Fransisco's Chinatown, becoming known throughout the community for his devastating reverse jump shot. "Basketball was something that my father did heavily before he had kids. In San Francisco, where my father was born and raised...you had this whole generation of Chinese American, basketball guys. So, for me, basketball - because of my father - is distinctly Asian-American!"

Director Esther Jun says, "I love all the surprises of this play. If you think it's about basketball, that's great, but you also get so much more. The world of the play is really vast. These characters think they're so small, but truly, they're affecting larger world events. They're learning the smallest actions can affect so many."

Amongst this dizzying fray is Manford, a Chinese American player struggling with questions of identity and a deep longing for familial connection. Manford travels to China confident on the court, but adrift in his search for a family past to ground him. A skilled athlete, the playwright's father also traveled to China for exhibition games against Beijing opponents in the 1980s. Yee says, "The Great Leap is a story of a scrappy young, Chinese American kid, who much like my father... [goes to a place] where the people look like you, but you come as their enemy."

A story with many universal themes, The Great Leap also casts crucial light on culturally specific struggles within the Asian American/Pacific Islander community not often highlighted in American theatre. Production Dramaturg Yining Lin says, "Generational trauma is so prevalent in a lot of BIPOC work, but you often don't hear about it. It takes a big occasion to finally hear those stories, and in this instance, it's this basketball game."

The kinetic production builds to a gripping theatricalized basketball game onstage. Beyond the court, washes of color, nimble lighting and period-specific props shift the stage seamlessly into more than 10 different settings - from a dingy apartment hallway in San Fransisco to the epic expanse of Beijing's Tiananmen Square.

Scenic Designer Yu Shibagaki transforms the Outcalt Theatre at Playhouse Square into a basketball court, complete with two hoops, colorful team banners, and contemporary details. Surrounding the court on three sides, the theatre's seating arrangement mirrors the tiered setup of a packed stadium. Inventive projections from Projections Director T. Paul Lowry recall jumbotrons and scoreboards, while deft lighting design from Michael Boll and sound design by Michelle Chen Cole conjure the noises and energy of a live sporting event with a humming, immersive intensity. Rounding out the design team are Samantha C. Jones (Costume Designer) and Janel Moore (Wig Designer).

CPH Interim Artistic & Managing Director Mark Cuddy says, "The Great Leap is one of those plays that takes a simple underdog story and expands it to an international tale about politics, family and the language of sports. With the production taking place in the Outcalt Theatre, audiences will wrap around the action for an immersive, visceral and theatrical experience."

Director Esther Jun says, "Sports are so deeply theatrical, and so many sports fans don't even think about coming to the theatre. So, the fact that this play comes in a basketball package, is really quite fascinating." Jun says, "Sports [is an] entry point into this world, but you're also actually delving into the history and culture of China through basketball... You have these bigger, epic layers... but at the heart of it is a very simple story about a boy searching for a father figure. That is so universal, on so many levels."

Tickets range from $15 to $95. Student tickets are $15 (valid student ID required). Ohio Direction/EBT cardholders receive $5 admission to any performance (up to eight tickets). Military personnel and their immediate families receive 50% off tickets. Seniors receive $10 off tickets. Tickets can be purchased by visiting clevelandplayhouse.com.

ABOUT THE CREATORS

Lauren Yee (Playwright) is a playwright, screenwriter, and TV writer born and raised in San Francisco. She currently lives in New York City. Her Cambodian Rock Band, with music by Dengue Fever and others, premiered at South Coast Rep, with subsequent productions at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, La Jolla Playhouse, Victory Gardens, City Theatre, Merrimack Rep, and Signature Theatre. Her play The Great Leap has been produced at Denver Center, Seattle Rep, Atlantic Theatre, Guthrie Theatre, American Conservatory Theatre, Arts Club, InterAct Theatre, Steppenwolf, Pasadena Playhouse/East West Players, and Cygnet Theatre. Lauren Yee's play King of the Yees premiered at The Goodman Theatre and Center Theatre Group, followed by productions at ACT Theatre, Canada's National Arts Centre, and Baltimore Center Stage. Other plays include Ching Chong Chinaman (Pan Asian Rep, Mu Performing Arts), The Hatmaker's Wife (Playwrights Realm, Moxie, PlayPenn), Hookman (Encore, Company One), In a Word (Young Vic, SF Playhouse, Cleveland Public Theatre, Strawdog), Samsara (Victory Gardens), The Song of Summer (Trinity Rep, Mixed Blood), and The Tiger Among Us (Mu). She is the winner of the Doris Duke Artist Award, the Steinberg Playwright Award, the Horton Foote Prize, the Kesselring Prize, the ATCA/Steinberg Award, American Academy of Arts and Letters literature award, and the Francesca Primus Prize. She has been a finalist for the Edward M. Kennedy Prize and the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Her plays were the #1 and #2 plays on the 2017 Kilroys List. Lauren is a Residency 5 playwright at Signature Theatre, New Dramatists member (class of 2025), Ma-Yi Writers' Lab member, former Princeton University Hodder fellow, and Playwrights Realm alumni playwright. Current commissions include Arena Stage, Geffen Playhouse, La Jolla Playhouse, Portland Center Stage, Second Stage, South Coast Rep.

BA: Yale. MFA: UCSD. www.laurenyee.com

ESTHER JUN (Director) is a Toronto based director who has worked with companies across Canada such as fu-Gen, Cahoots, Nightwood, Soulpepper, and Talk is Free. She is a founding member and Co-Artistic Director of Directors Lab North, the first international offshoot of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, of which she was a 2010 member. In 2015 Esther was a Neil Munro Intern Director at the Shaw Festival and in 2016 was part of the Michael Langham Workshop for Classical Direction at the Stratford Festival. New Play Development, however, kept pulling her back in and she was the Assistant Artistic Director at Tarragon Theatre from 2016-2018, where she directed the Canadian premiere of Evan Placey's Girls Like That and also premiered Theory, by Norman Yeung. In 2017, Esther's co-production of Kate Henning's The Last Wife with The Befrey and GCTC was nominated for 7 Prix Rideau Awards, including Best Production and Best Director. She won the Capital Critics award for Best Director. She returned to Stratford in 2020 to assist Antoni Cimolino on his Richard III, but the pandemic had other plans. The Festival during that time began to embark on a culture shift and Esther was asked to join the Festival's Anti-Racism Committee and become an Artistic Associate in Planning. She also took over the directorship of The Langham Directors Workshop. Most recently Esther has directed I Am William by Rébecca Déraspe and a new adaptation of Little Women by Jordi Mand at the Festival. www.theestherjun.com

ABOUT Cleveland Play House

Cleveland Play House, founded in 1915 and recipient of the 2015 Regional Theatre Tony Award, is America's first professional regional theatre. Throughout its rich history, CPH has remained dedicated to its mission to inspire, stimulate, and entertain diverse audiences across Northeast Ohio by producing plays and theatre education programs of the highest professional standards. CPH has produced more than 100 world and/or American premieres, and over its long history more than 12 million people have attended over 1,600 productions. Today, Cleveland Play House celebrates the beginning of its second century of service while performing in three state-of-the art venues at Playhouse Square in downtown Cleveland. Cleveland Play House is made possible in part by state tax dollars allocated by the Ohio Legislature to the Ohio Arts Council (OAC). The OAC is a state agency that funds and supports quality arts experiences to strengthen Ohio communities culturally, educationally, and economically. Cleveland Play House is supported in part by the residents of Cuyahoga County through a public grant from Cuyahoga Arts & Culture. To learn more, visit: www.clevelandplayhouse.com.

Photo Credit: Joshua McElroy