Francis Jue and Kelly Marie Tran to Star in Lauren Yee’s KING OF THE BEES
Performances will run Off-Broadway October 6 – November 15.
Signature Theatre will present Lauren Yee’s semi-autobiographical comedy King of the Yees, directed by Joshua Kahan Brody, October 6 – November 15 in The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theater at The Pershing Square Signature Center. With King of the Yees, audiences familiar with Yee’s playful, heightened comic dissections of global political systems and seismic historical shifts will find the playwright zooming in—with trademark theatrical (and meta-theatrical) flair, hilarity, and heart—on her own family and complex relationship with San Francisco’s iconic Chinatown.
King of the Yees circles the character of Larry Yee, who for decades has been the heart and soul of the Yee Fung Toy Family Association, a fraternal organization in San Francisco’s Chinatown. But to his daughter Lauren, a playwright living in New York, the association is an obsolete relic of a vanishing world. When Larry suddenly disappears, Lauren sets off on a wild quest to find him, embarking on a surreal, magical journey through the history and myths of her own lineage. King of the Yees is a hilarious and heartfelt "kind of true" story about what we inherit and what it means to truly be a Yee.
Tony Award winner Francis Jue (Signature: Cambodian Rock Band; Broadway: Yellow Face; Off-Broadway: Tartuffe) performed as Yee’s character’s father in Chicago and LA (where it made its world premiere with The Goodman Theatre and Center Theatre Group) and San Francisco (with San Francisco Playhouse). He reprises the role for this new production at Signature. Jue and Lauren Yee reteam with Brody, who staged those regional productions, making this new mounting both appropriately a family affair and an opportunity to reimagine it for a new theater and new audiences, and with an otherwise new cast.
Yee knew of Francis Jue long before they began working together on the play: her aunt, she remembers, used to be a fervent theatergoer and would see shows he was in around the Bay Area. Both Yee’s and Jue’s families lived in San Francisco at the same time: Yee’s grandmother and Jue’s father were in the same class together in elementary school. Yee explains, “They were both born around 1930 when you could only live in Chinatown, when the Chinese American community was small and mighty and knew each other, but were also trapped with each other. Francis and I share that history, and it feels really wonderful to be revisiting it with him and Joshua with a new cast and production. This is a company of true all-stars.”
Joining Jue is Star Wars breakout Kelly Marie Tran (Film: The Last Jedi, The Rise of Skywalker, Raya and the Last Dragon) as Lauren, the character based on the playwright, and Daniel K. Isaac (TV: Billions, Elsbeth; Off-Broadway: The Chinese Lady) as Actor 3, Maureen Sebastian (Off-Broadway: Meat Suit, or the shitshow of motherhood, The Best We Could, Poor Yella Rednecks) as Actor 2, and David Shih (Broadway: Life of Pi; Off-Broadway: Sumo, Bus Stop) as Actor 1. Isaac and Shih had, nearly a decade ago, performed in early readings of the play, marking another return to the material for this production’s cast. The creative team is Krit Robinson (Scenic Designer), Michelle J. Li (Costume Designer), Jiyoun Chang (Lighting Designer), Fan Zhang (Sound Designer), Steve Cuiffo (Illusions Designer), and Kasson Marroquin (PSM), and Caparelliotis Casting (Casting).
Brody and Yee have a long shared history: they went to college and grad school together and have now been working together nearly half of their lives, and Brody credits King of the Yees with launching his career. He says, "Lauren’s plays – all of them, I think – are, at their core, about families. King of the Yees invites us to think of ourselves as part of the family. As Larry tells us, we’re all ‘honorary Yees’, at least while the play is going on. Francis [Jue] once told me that ‘Lauren challenges us to play gleefully with utmost seriousness. She makes me laugh and cry, the way only my family can.’ That’s what King of the Yees is like: it’s like being with your family. Or it makes you want to call your family on the phone right after the show. To tell and retell the stories that you heard from them, the stories that make you who you are. Getting to do this play now, at Signature, with this extraordinary cast and creative team is a ‘pinch me’ kind of moment. Knowing it as well as we do, I’m feeling empowered to take risks, to try to make a truly new production here in New York."
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