Ann Lee

Ann Lee was born in Tawau, Malaysia. She is a playwright, writer, and currently a PhD student at the National University of Singapore, researching political satire in Southeast Asia. She began writing for theatre as a member of the Royal Court Young Activists theatre group, London, where she joined a writers' workshop with then writer-in-residence Hanif Kureishi. She holds a BA (Hons) in Applied Photography, Film and Television (Westminster) and an MSc in History of Science, Medicine and...See more

Ann Lee was born in Tawau, Malaysia. She is a playwright, writer, and currently a PhD student at the National University of Singapore, researching political satire in Southeast Asia. She began writing for theatre as a member of the Royal Court Young Activists theatre group, London, where she joined a writers' workshop with then writer-in-residence Hanif Kureishi. She holds a BA (Hons) in Applied Photography, Film and Television (Westminster) and an MSc in History of Science, Medicine and Technology (Oxon). She is also an Asia Leadership Fellow (ALFP, 2001), awarded by the Japan Foundation and International House of Japan, where she spent time in Tokyo with colleagues from China, India, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand, and presented her research on 'the ghosts of Asian values'. Lee was Artistic Director and co-founder of Kuali Works (1994-2011), an all-women theatre group in Malaysia that first produced her plays, including the critically acclaimed, Kuala Lumpur Knock-Out (1994), about a young factory worker who dreams of boxing Mike Tyson (which received a Director's Exchange Award from the Australian High Commission, Kuala Lumpur); Hang Li Poh - Melakan Princess (1998), a re-telling of the myth of the Emperor of China's daughter who married the Sultan of Malacca; and From Table Mountain to Teluk Intan (2001) by Shahimah Idris with Lee, Sue Ingleton and Jo Kukathas, based on the true story of a Cape Malay child in South Africa who leaves apartheid but ends up on the 'right side' of the tracks to face her most difficult trial. The last play Lee directed was Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues , which was banned in Malaysia in 2000. Her last full-length play, Tarap Man , revised for this anthology, won 'Best Original Script' at the 2007 Boh Cameronian Arts Awards, Malaysia. She is working on a new full-length play, provisionally titled Not Far Now . Lee's work for the stage has been performed at the Asian Monodrama Festival, Commonwealth Games Theatre Festival, Ubud Writers and Readers Festival, Sydney Writers Festival, and the New York International Fringe Festival. See less