Kristine Haruna Lee + Jen Goma
Kristine Haruna Lee is a theater maker whose work navigates non-linear playwriting, the practice and performance of auto-theory, and the construction of visually rich performance landscapes with her company harunalee, hailed by the New York Times as “So full of impulses and splendid, fractious energy”. Recent plays with harunalee include Memory Retrograde (The Public’s Under The Radar Festival) Sugar Shack (La MaMa Club) and War Lesbian (Dixon Place TONY LGBT Critic’s Pick). Her play Suicide Forest directed by Aya Ogawa will premiere at the Bushwick Starr in February 2019. She’s a recipient of the MAP Fund Award, the Lotos Foundation Prize for Directing, New Dramatists Van Lier Fellowship, and has been a member of Interstate 73, The Public's Devised Theater Working Group, Ars Nova Maker's Lab, and BAX AIR. She is an affiliated artist with New Georges and currently in the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab with collaborator Jen Goma. Lee teaches playwriting and performance at NYU Experimental Theater Wing, Playwrights Horizons Theater School, PACE University, York College, and Abrons Arts Center. MFA Brooklyn College for Playwriting with Mac Wellman and Erin Courtney, BFA NYU Tisch Experimental Theater Wing. Check out harunalee’s statement on equity and ethical collaboration: http://www.harunalee.com/equity-social-justice/
Jen Goma (Showtime Goma) is performer/creator of music, videos and live shows. A self-propelled multi-media artist with "serious chops... (and) undeniable charm"--Pitchfork Music, whose debut album, Smiley Face, "shows how she can cause – and helm – a commotion while working with beats borrowed from R&B and pop."-- Rolling Stone. Her self-produced music and videos have appeared on Playboy, NPR, Pitchfork, Consequence of Sound and Stereogum. A member of the bands A Sunny Day in Glasgow and Roman à Clef, she is currently alongside Kristine Haruna Lee in the Soho Repertory Theater Writer/Director Lab. The album Smiley Face, made in collaboration with Deerhoof's Greg Saunier and her A Sunny Day in Glasgow bandmates, was released in June of 2017 and Rolling Stone placed it on their list of "Albums to Stream Now." Goma tours frequently, opening for acts like of Montreal in a recent live collaboration with Lou Tides (Teeny Lieberson of the band TEEN), as well as with her band A Sunny Day in Glasgow, who have been invited to perform at the Primavera Sound Festival, Les Nuits Botanique and SXSW. Goma was also a member of People Get Ready, a band/performance group that have mounted shows at NY institutions like The Kitchen and New York Live Arts, in addition to providing live original music for Jodi Melnick in the Fall For Dance festival and performing at the Crossing Brooklyn Ferry Festival. The consummate collaborator, she has shared the stage with Jherek Bischoff, been featured on records by The Pains of Being Pure at Heart and created a documentary video short series with Luisa Conlon called The Working Life, which has been shown by the Brooklyn Filmaker's Collective. A consultant on the Play Our Kiki: A Gay Farce which premiered in 2013 at the Fringe Festival as an AEA Showcase, Jen is currently writing music and lyrics for, You're It, a musical based on the Netflix series Making a Murderer, while composing and sound designing for harunalee's Memory Retrograde and Built for Collapse's Danger Signals.
