Mike Lew

Biography

Mike Lew is a Brooklyn-based Chinese American playwright. His plays include Teenage Dick, Tiger Style!, microcrisis, and Moustache Guys. His work has been developed and produced at Wooly Mammoth, Huntington Theatre, Donmar Warehouse, Olney Theatre, Ma-Yi Theatre Company at the Public Theatre, and La Jolla Playhouse. He is a Tony voter, a member of the Dramatists Guild Council, and a resident of the New Dramatists. He is a Mellon Foundation Playwright in Residence at Ma-Yi as well as a former La Jolla Playhouse Artist-in-Residence. His honors include Lark Venturous and NYFA fellowships and the Kleban, PEN Emerging Playwright, Lanford Wilson, Helen Merrill, Heideman, and Kendeda awards. He is also the former co-director of Ma-Yi Writers Lab, the largest collective of Asian-American playwrights in the country. He received his B.A. at Yale University, double majoring in Theater (director) and English (writing), then received his artist diploma in playwriting at the Juilliard school.

Career Highlight

Mike Lew was selected to be a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2021 for Drama and Performance Art.

Teenage Dick

  • Breakdown:
    • 3W, 3M (1 M actor with cerebral palsy and 1 W actor is wheelchair user, Lew also states a preference to cast racially and gender diverse actors and actresses)
  • Synopsis:
    • A modern day retelling of Shakespeare’s Richard III, Mike Lew’s Teenage Dick follows Richard who is a 16 year old in high school that is bullied for his cerebral palsy and his tendency to speak in a Shakespearean way. Discontent with his lot in life, he plots his revenge to gain power and become senior class president and is willing to do so by any means necessary. However, in his rise to power, he spirals deeper and deeper into manipulation and greed culminating in a dark conclusion that calls us to question our biases and relationship with the disabled.
  • Development/Production History:
    • Teenage Dick was commissioned and developed by Apothetae theater company, a company that serves to present and explore plays that illustrate the “disabled experience”. The play was first presented as a workshop production in 2016, and premiered at the Public Theater in June 2018. It then went on to be produced by the Wooly Mammoth, Donmar Warehouse, and Huntington Theatre.
  • Photos:
Teenage Dick, Huntington Theatre, 2021.
Photo: Teresa Castracane
Teenage Dick, Huntington Theatre, 2021.
Photo: Teresa Castracane
Teenage Dick, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, 2021.
Photo: Teresa Castracane
  • Plays
    • People’s Park (2008)
    • Stockton (2008)
    • microcrisis (2010)
    • Bike America (2013)
    • Tiger Style! (2015)
    • The Colonialism Project (2018)
    • Teenage Dick (2018)

Reflection on Contribution to Anti-Racist Theatre

What I find most shocking about Mike Lew’s Teenage Dick isn’t the fact that it’s a modern day retelling of Shakespeare’s Richard III set in a high school or even the fact that two of the leads are characters with disabilities (the play also calls for a casting of actors with disabilities). The most shocking aspect about this dark comedy is the fact that its lead character Richard, a high school teenager with cerebral palsy, isn’t made out to be a hero by the end of the play. Lew shatters all expectations of what we expect from a story dealing with a historically underrepresented group. As a review from the Los Angeles Times states, “the play’s originality lies in the way disability is treated sensitively but without sentimentality.” By the end of the play, Richard isn’t given a redemption arc and, in fact, wrecks just about everyone around him. In this way, Lew asks us to reconsider our relationship towards the disabled. By treating the disabled with pity or sympathy, we place them on a different level that, although well-intentioned, ultimately dehumanizes them. Lew’s innovative approach instead allows for a humanization that accounts for all the flaws and differences we see among the disabled– no longer treating them as above or below us, but fairly and humanely.

Ivan Skvaril; Film, Television, and Theater Major, Theology Supplemental Major; Class of 2022