Lauren Yee Selected Works

It's freshman year of college and Lexi's life is falling apart. Ever since the mysterious death of her high school best friend, Lexi has found herself stalked by a tall, dark, hook-handed stranger who has been seriously cramping her style. In this existential slasher comedy, Lexi learns what it means to grow up -- and it's not pretty.

Americans Katie and Craig are having a baby with Suraiya, a surrogate from India.  As all three “parents” anxiously wait for the baby to be born, flights of fancy attack them from all sides, in the form of an unctuous Frenchman and a smart-mouthed fetus. A whimsical take on modern day colonialism.  

That song on every radio and wedding DJ’s playlist — that catchy earworm that’s inescapable for an entire summer — the “song of the summer” …there’s more to it than everyone knows. There’s more to know about its singer, too — like why he snuck away from a concert and traveled hundreds of miles to visit the home of his childhood piano teacher. What – and who – he finds there could change his career and his life. A touching story about how revisiting the past can change our future. 

For nearly 20 years, playwright Lauren Yee’s father Larry has been a driving force in the Yee Family Association, a seemingly obsolescent Chinese American men’s club formed 150 years ago in the wake of the Gold Rush. But when her father goes missing, Lauren must plunge into the rabbit hole of San Francisco Chinatown and confront a world both foreign and familiar. At once bitingly hilarious and heartbreakingly honest, King of the Yees is an epic joyride across cultural, national, and familial borders that explores what it truly means to be a Yee.

It's 1989 and Manford Lum, renowned for his basketball hustle in Chinatown, tries to talk his way on to a college team destined for a "friendship" game in China. Coach Saul blocks him hard, but Manford rebounds and launches himself on a journey to a homeland he's never known.  Bouncing between Beijing and San Francisco, between 1989 and 1971, this clever and theatrical play looks at America’s arms-length relationship with Communist China and the post-Cultural Revolution through a story about two generations of basketball players.

Part comedy, part mystery, part rock concert, this thrilling story toggles back and forth in time, as father and daughter face the music of the past. Neary, a young Cambodian American has found evidence that could finally put away the Khmer Rouge’s chief henchman. But her work is far from done. When Dad shows up unannounced—his first return to Cambodia since fleeing 30 years ago—it’s clear this isn’t just a pleasure trip.