featured project

THE SHIPMENT

By Young Jean Lee
Cast: Nkechi Emeruwa, William Hartfield, Howard Johnson Jr., Nican Robinson, and Michael Wayne Turner III

Bay Area Premiere at Crowded Fire

Scenic: Deanna L. Zibello
Lighting: Heather Basarab
Sound: Hannah Birch Carl
Costumes: Keiko Shimosato Carreiro
Props: Devon LaBelle
Choreographer: Rami Margron
Fight Director: Carla Pantoja

“The Shipment confounds, delights, provokes and dazzles. Co-directed by Crowded Fire Artistic Director Mina Morita and Lisa Marie Rollins, this is contemporary theater at its most challenging and rewarding”

—Theater Dogs

“A show like “The Shipment” almost defies critique. That it’s good is almost beside the point. That it distills a hoard of experiences, frustrations, disappointments and normally unspoken critical observations into 90 minutes is self-evident. That it makes you squirm means it works.”

— Edge Media

“Any play by experimentalist Young Jean Lee, the Korean-born New Yorker who has been called the most adventurous playwright of her generation on the downtown theater scene, is probably bound to be unsettling, perplexing and funny. Such is certainly the case with 2009’s “The Shipment,” now in a smartly directed (by Mina Morita and Lisa Marie Rollins) production at Crowded Fire Theater, performed by an excellent five-member ensemble.

The play is forcefully and musically acted; it is well-staged and directed by Mina Morita, the new artistic director of Crowded Fire Theater; and it bubbles over with fun and fire with lots of laughter at the ridiculous and real situation, and at ourselves.”

—Examiner

photos by Pak Han