Young Jean Lee STRAIGHT WHITE MEN

[Theatre]

What happens when you lose the greatest of all privileges: that of forgetting you are privileged? This unexpected question is the departure point for STRAIGHT WHITE MEN, a piece which looks into the figure of the white heterosexual male, the “default voice” of our Western societies. In a faint echo to Arthur Miller’s Death of A Salesman and its exploration of the moral conflicts of a white, middle-class family in post-war America, STRAIGHT WHITE MEN brings to the stage an average family, comprising a father and his three adult sons. In the play, one of the sons questions his own position and goes against family expectations, thereby bringing into question the dominant values of contemporary neo-liberal society - and in particular its tendency to see personal success as a universal objective, individualism as a moral code, and the culture of self as an entity to be shaped and built. With its unassuming hero in mind, Young Jean Lee’s piece adopts certain theatrical conventions in order to bring out the strangeness and artificiality. For this Korean-born director and playwright, and key figure on the New York theatre scene, the play also poses questions about identity in all its various forms - be it ethnic, social or sexual - in a society which never fails to exalt its existence, but without ever delving into its contradictions nor clearly stating the terms for true togetherness.