press release
2010 - 2011 season

Undermain Theatre’s 27th Season concludes with
THE SHIPMENT written by Young Jean Lee

For press information contact
Narciso Tovar narciso@bignoisecomm.com
(214)725-4631

Through special arrangement with AO International, Undermain Theatre is proud to announce its production of THE SHIPMENT, written by Young Jean Lee, directed by Stan Wojewodski, Jr. and running from June 4, 2011 to June 25, 2011.

THE SHIPMENT is a hilarious and revealing variety show, probing issues of race and cultural identity through multiple theatrical constructs: a stand-up comedy act, a song and dance number, a cartoonish rags-to-riches story and a naturalistic drawing room number with an edgy punch-line. Undermain’s production of THE SHIPMENT is the first outside of Ms. Lee’s own wildly successful production, which she directed and toured from New York to Europe.

Undermain Theatre’s production of THE SHIPMENT written by Young Jean Lee is:

Directed by
Stan Wojewodski, Jr.

With
Adam A. Anderson, David Jeremiah, Beverly Johnson, Christopher Piper,
& Akron Watson

Design by
Bruce DuBose, Rachel Finn, Millicent Johnnie, & Steve Woods

Previews: June 1, 2, & 3, 2011, preview tickets $10
Opening Night: June 4, 2011, 8:15 pm
Running Dates: June 1 – June 25, 2011
Show Days & Times: Wed & Thur @ 7:30 pm, Fri & Sat @ 8:15pm
Ticket Prices: Wed & Thurs - $15, Fri - $20, Sat - $25,
Preview tickets - $10
Location: All performances are at Undermain Theatre,
Located at 3200 Main St, Dallas, TX 75226
(free, attended parking is available)
For Tickets: 214-747-5515 (box office)
or online at www.undermain.org

Reviews from Young Jean Lee’s production of THE SHIPMENT

"Cultural images of black America are tweaked, pulled and twisted like Silly Putty in this subversive, seriously funny new theater piece by the adventurous playwright Young Jean Lee.”

-Charles Isherwood, New York Times

"This is so ingenious a twist, such a radical bit of theatrical smoke and mirrors, that, in rethinking everything that has come before...we are forced to confront our own preconceived notions of race.”

- Hilton Als, The New Yorker

"Lee confirms herself as one of the best experimental playwrights in America."

- David Cote, Time Out New York

YOUNG JEAN LEE (Playwright) is a 2011 Guggenheim Fellow, and was named by American Theatre magazine as one of the 25 artists who will shape the American theater over the next 25 years. She was born in Korea in 1974 and moved to the United States when she was two years old. She grew up in Pullman, WA and attended college at UC Berkeley, where she majored in English. Immediately after college, she entered Berkeley’s English PhD program, where she studied Shakespeare for six years before moving to New York to become a playwright in 2002. Since then, she has directed her plays at Soho Rep (LEAR; THE APPEAL), The Kitchen (THE SHIPMENT), The Public Theater (CHURCH), P.S. 122 (CHURCH; PULLMAN, WA), HERE Arts Center (SONGS OF THE DRAGONS FLYING TO HEAVEN), and the Ontological-Hysteric Theater (GROUNDWORK OF THE METAPHYSIC OF MORALS); and performed in her play WE'RE GONNA DIE (with band Future Wife) at Joe's Pub. She has worked with Radiohole and the National Theater of the United States of America. She is a member of New Dramatists and 13P, has done residencies at Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, the Ucross Foundation, and Hedgebrook, and has an MFA from Mac Wellman's playwriting program at Brooklyn College.

STAN WOJEWODSKI, JR. (Director) Mr. Wojewodski recently directed ENDGAME by Samuel Beckett for Undermain Theatre in 2010. From 1991-2003, Mr. Wojewodski was the Artistic Director of the Yale Repertory Theatre and Dean of the Yale School of Drama. His productions at Yale included the premieres of David Edgar's PENTECOST, Dawn Powell's BIG NIGHT, and Eric Overmyer's FIGARO FIGARO as well as plays by Shakespeare, Marlowe and Shaw. From 1977-1991, he was the Artistic Director at Baltimore Center Stage where he directed over 40 productions including the American premieres of plays by Edward Bond, Odon von Horvath, Vaclav Havel and Antonio Buero-Vallejo. He has also staged productions at, among many others, the Abbey Theatre in

Dublin, the Guthrie Theater, La Jolla Playhouse, Seattle Repertory Theatre and the Williamstown Theatre Festival, where he was an associate director. He has served on the board of directors for Theatre Communications Group, Dionysia Festival (Italy) and has been a frequent panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts. He is familiar to Dallas audiences for his Dallas Theater Center productions of Ostrovsky's A FAMILY AFFAIR, THE REAL THING by Tom Stoppard, THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ERNEST and an adaptation of Jane Austen's PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. Currently, Mr. Wojewodski is the Chair of the Theatre Division for Southern Methodist University's Meadows School of the Arts where he is also a Distinguished Professor of Directing. At SMU he has taught directing and also directed numerous student productions, including BETRAYED, TROUBLE IN MIND, THE OVERWHELMING, FABULATION, SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER, and THE SKRIKER.

MILLICENT JOHNNIE (Choreographer) Native of Lafayette, Louisiana received both her BFA and MFA in Dance at the Florida State University. Ms. Johnnie currently teaches on the dance faculty at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX. She served on the dance faculty at Tulane University and Dillard University located in New Orleans, Louisiana after touring as resident choreographer and rehearsal director of the Urban Bush Women in New York City. Johnnie moved to New York City after teaching Hip Hop and Jazz movement several years as a veteran staff member of the Universal Dance Association based in Memphis, Tennessee. Millicent co-founded the Phlava Hip Hop and Jazz Dance Company based in Tallahassee, Florida receiving a Prague International Dance Festival “Best Choreography” award and “First Place International Dance Title” for Hip Hop Choreography entitled Wrath. She has served as a choreographer for the New York City Opera/ Parable of the Sower workshop, U.S. Cultural Ambassadors of Music- Universes Poetry Theatre/ Amerville, The Krannert Performance Arts Center/The Hip Hop Project, Grammy Award Winner Bill Summers/ Los Hombres Caliente and notable directors Peter Sellars, Rhodessa Jones and Chey Yew to name a few.

Millicent’s Choreography has been featured on Cleo Parker-Robinson Dance, The Urban Bush Women, Hubbard Street II, The Alternate Roots Cultural Tour Uprooted: The Katrina Project, ESPN, the Prince William Network, Sunshine Network and has been presented at venues such as the Danspace project Food for Thought (NYC), Dancenow/NYC Dance Harlem and Joyce Soho Series (NYC), Kennedy Center Millennium Stage (Washington D.C.), The Yard at Lincoln Center (NYC), International Association for Blacks in Dance Conference 2000, 2001, 2002 (TX, CA, D.C.), The Houston Black Dance Festival (TX), The New Orleans Jazz Dance Project (New Orleans, LA).

She has been recognized as a guest artist at the Tougaloo College- Mississippi Hip Hop Youth Festival, University of Tennessee- Knoxville, The Carpet Bag Theatre- Show what you know Festival, Florida State/ Urban Bush Women- Summer Dance Institute, Florida A & M University, Amherst College- Project 2050, University of North Western Louisiana, University of South Carolina at Aiken, University of Central Florida, Barry University, Auburn University, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Jacksonville University and Rollins College.

In 2003, Millicent received funding through Arts International to travel to Brazil in
which she trained with Abada Capoeira, Capoeira Brazil, and at the Escola da
Dansa in historic Salvador, Bahia. By merging her informal and formal American dance training in Hip Hop with instruction of the Brazilian marital art capoeira, Brazilian folkloric dance and Caribbean influenced movement; Johnnie created a hybrid form of contemporary vocabulary. Coincidently, the following summer Johnnie was given the opportunity to travel to Havana, Cuba through a partnership developed between Florida A & M University and the University of Havana, which enabled her to take a cultural studies approach to looking at social dance forms that developed among black Cuban culture.

Training with artist such as Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Ronald K. Brown, Garth Fagan, Los Munequitos de Matanzas, Richard Gonzales, Reginald Yates, and Yvonne Daniels provoked her interest in the dance origins of Hip Hop and other African American vernacular dance forms. Millicent believes that researching, identifying and clarifying similarities between these forms of dance will allow for continued creation of this hybrid form of movement distinguishing itself uniquely as a part of Hip Hop culture.

Production History of THE SHIPMENT
THE SHIPMENT was co-commissioned by the Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University (world premiere October 2008) and The Kitchen (New York Premiere January 2008). Additional development support was provided by the Rockefeller MAP Fund; the Jerome Foundation; the Greenwall Foundation; the Tobin Foundation; and the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), a state agency. Residency support was provided by Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Collapsable Hole, IRT Theater, The MacDowell Colony, New Dramatists, Ochard Project and Yaddo. THE SHIPMENT is also made possible by a grant from the Ford Foundation and the Association of Performing Arts Presenters Ensemble Theatre Collaboration Grant Program.

ABOUT UNDERMAIN
Undermain Theatre, founded in 1984, is a company of artists that performs new and experimental works in Texas, New York, and Europe. The theater collaborates with playwrights, supports a theater archive and operates a theater under 3200 Main Street in Dallas’ legendary Deep Ellum. Call 214-747-1424 or visit www.undermain.org for more information.

Undermain Theatre is made possible, in part, by the support of The Dallas Foundation, The Communities Foundation, The City of Dallas Office of Cultural Affairs, The Texas Commission on the Arts, TACA, The Shubert Foundation, Westdale Asset Management, and many individuals.

Artistic Director: Katherine Owens. Executive Producer: Bruce DuBose. Associate Producer: Suzanne Thomas. Operations Manager: Ariana Cook. Technical Manager: Ben Bryant.

“The Undermain is an unsung American treasure.”
Backstage Magazine

Best Theatre in Dallas 2010
D Magazine

“…Undermain seeded the ground for Dallas as a writer-friendly town.”
American Theatre Magazine

“One of the best small theaters in America.”
San Diego Union-Tribune

“Our most daring and accomplished theatrical troupe.”
The Dallas Morning News