Theatre Journal

“No one is immune from tragedy.” Perhaps there is no other moment in recent history where this sentiment would ring as true. As it happens, the ubiquity of human tragedy is a central conceit of Young Jean Lee’s genre-defying performance, We’re Gonna Die, which opened off-Broadway in February 2020 and closed just days before New York (and much of the country) would go into lockdown. Who could have contemplated tragedy on such a scale? Little did we know that, in just a few weeks, theatre venues would close their doors to live performance for more than a year. In that year, the COVID-19 pandemic death toll reached over 500,000 in the United States and millions globally, making Lee’s work more prescient than ever.

True to form, this anti-tragedy of sorts thwarts the promise of catastrophe and its resultant catharsis, following Lee’s characteristically unpredictable style of writing. In place of traditional dramatic narrative, We’re Gonna Die embraces an episodic structure that combines music, dance, and storytelling in what could be described as a theatricalized concert experience—a genre not unfamiliar to New York [End Page 245] audiences, especially those who saw David Byrne’s American Utopia, which ran concurrently on Broadway (and is reviewed in December 2020’s Theatre Journal). Performed in under sixty minutes, the production packed an emotionally heavy punch as six loosely connected monologues given by a narrator dubbed the “Singer” (Janelle McDermoth) recounted tragic stories of chronic and acute illness, declining health with age, deteriorating relationships, and unbearable loneliness. These stories were punctuated by powerful rock-infused tunes that offered life-affirming, even humorous moments of collective release. In short, the production staged a public gathering around tragic events, while replacing acts of mourning with a celebration of the perseverance of humanity in the face of immense pain and death.

Despite its provocative title, We’re Gonna Die is not a performance that ruminates on death. Instead, the performance foregrounded the inevitability of life after death. Described appropriately in the promotional materials as a “non-musical/non-play/ non-concert that is not about dying,” it actively avoided plot and character development, instead cohering around the figure of the singer who led her band members by reciting each monologue and then performing songs in counterpoint to the spoken text. The monologues are centered upon moments of grief, beginning with childhood and transgressing to romantic and family heartbreak in young adulthood to old age, thus reflecting tragedy across the life course. For instance, one monologue detailed the solemn life of a socially inept uncle, while another described a horrific story of a close friend ripping out her cornea in a freak accident after the discovery that her lover had been cheating. Inspired by the loss of Lee’s own father, the lengthiest monologue explored the premature death of the singer’s father to cancer, which we find out might have been avoided if he had access to proper medical treatment. The monologues were dispersed between songs that served to elevate the emotional effect of these stories while consciously avoiding sentimentality. The band members, dressed in hip punk-rock costumes, were an integral part of the production, as they frequently interacted with the singer not only vocally, but also through dance sequences (choreographed by director Raja Feather Kelly) and audience interaction, especially during the production’s finale. As Lee writes in the script: “All of the stories in this show are true, but not all of them happened to me . . . the show is designed for anyone to be able to perform as themselves without adopting a theatrical persona.” Unlike more conventional features of tragedy, in this performance, pain was supplanted with new forms of hope and a public reckoning with grief. While recognizing that pain is part...