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King Lear without Lear, you say? What would be the point? For playwright
Young Jean Lee, it is to experience the Bard's great tragedy in the most thrilling and freewheeling fashion—which is the only way Lee can approach a subject, as anyone who saw last winter's acclaimed
The Shipment can attest. Yet for someone whose plays have garnered so many accolades, Lee talks a lot about failure. One might say she's made it part of her process. "Here's how it goes," she told me last fall, following the second workshop performance of her Lear, opening shortly at
Soho Repertory Theatre. "I start with something that doesn't work, and then I fail, fail, and fail again, until it comes together. What you just saw? I'm not happy with much of it. And it's completely different than the first workshop a few months ago. That may seem nerve-racking, but it's the only way I know how to do this."
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