Theater maker, screenwriter, and educator Haruna Lee and Tai Chi instructor Raymond Lee will join The Actors Center Resident Company this fall for workshops on playwriting and Tai Chi.
Haruna Lee is a Taiwanese-Japanese-American experimental playwright and performance artist, educator, screenwriter and community steward based in Brooklyn, NY. Their plays are often an urge to honor their mother’s broken English, to translate experiences despite the gulf of cultures, to know their own psychic blood and guts, and to give up on words entirely and commune through epic imagery and ritual. Plays include War Lesbian, Memory Retrograde, Suicide Forest, 49 Days, and DADBOT. Lee is a recipient of the 2026 Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2026 Creative Capital Award, a 2025 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize Finalist receiving a Special Commendation, a 2021 Steinberg Playwright Award, a 2021 FCA Grants to Artists Award, and a 2020 Obie Award for Playwriting. Their writing has been published by Broadway Licensing, Yale’s Theater Magazine, Table Work Press, and 53rd State Press. As a performer and collaborator, they’ve worked alongside Lynn Nottage, Aya Ogawa, Ralph Lee, Mac Wellman, Minor Theater, The Talking Band, Taylor Mac, and Anohni—and many more. They currently teach at Hunter and Yale in the MFA Playwriting Program. harunalee.com
Raymond Lee (Tai Chi Ray) is a New York City–based Tai Chi instructor and founder of Manhattan Tai Chi. He began practicing martial arts at age seven and grew up in a family with a five-generation tradition in Traditional Chinese Medicine. Ray approaches Tai Chi not simply as a martial art or form of exercise, but as an ongoing exploration of the relationship between body and mind. His teaching invites students to slow down, turn their attention inward, and explore how relaxation, awareness, energy, and intention shape the way we move and experience ourselves. He has taught Tai Chi since 2018 and has shared his practice with communities at Lincoln Center, AARP, New York University, Columbia University, BlackRock, and other cultural, educational, and professional organizations. Ray is also a NASM Certified Personal Trainer, Corrective Exercise Specialist, and Senior Fitness Specialist.
