“Cambodian Rock Band is a survivor’s story. Deeply affecting, noteworthy theater, as powerful as great Shoah films like Life Is Beautiful and Schindler’s List…The real achievement of Yee’s script is its humanity. This is a big-hearted, life-affirming look at a terrible tragedy that ends with a high-spirited rock concert.”
—David Gordon, Theatre Mania

“At the intersection of tragedy, rock, and comedy, Cambodian Rock Band is one of the best plays of the year…A stunning reminder that while joy and art can be silenced, they cannot be extinguished.”
—Catey Sullivan, Chicago Reader

“From historic drama to cute comedy to dark humor to vibrant bursts of musical defiance…An often horrifying, but ultimately exhilarating reminder that if there’s one thing totalitarian regimes fear, it’s artists.”
—Michael Dale, Broadway World

“Human beings are complex, and deal with trauma in complex ways. Perhaps Cambodian Rock Band’s greatest triumph is in asserting joy as one of them. Thus, this wittily funny, wonderfully complex, and deeply moving work ends as it began: In a defiant celebration of irresistible joy.”
—Austin Yang, New York Theatre Guide

“Cambodian Rock Band, a very moving and geo-politically focused piece (with music by Dengue Fever) that looks at the strife-filled history of that nation in Southeast Asia…A haunting, wise, political and personally searing show, a work that will resonant with anyone with a family history of escape.”
—Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune

“The journey is often a fanciful one, more metaphoric than realistic, marked by implausible coincidences, touches of folkloric whimsy and an antic sense of humor that keeps pathos at bay. Yee is such a confident dramatist that we’re perfectly content to wait as she lays out the pieces of her puzzle, never doubting that she’ll put them all together in good time.”
—Margaret Gray, Los Angeles Times

“Sardonic humor isn’t something you expect from a play addressing a genocide that claimed two million lives, but it’s part of what has made Lauren Yee’s genre-defiant blend of family reckoning, haunting historical investigation and psychedelic surf rock concert such a popular hit across the country.”
—David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

“Yee is a playwright of great heart and audacity to match…A heartbreaking reminder of how what we think of as a fixed human identity can melt into pulp under inhuman conditions.”
—Ben Brantley, New York Times

“Cambodian Rock Band oozes suspense. Early on, Yee introduces a Sophie’s Choice secret that, by play’s end, demands to be revealed. This writer knows how to tell a great story.”
—Robert Hofler, The Wrap

“Cambodia’s violent and genocidal past doesn’t sound like a story that will have you leaving the theater smiling. But Lauren Yee manages to create a small miracle with her brave, heartwarming, and funny play Cambodian Rock Band.”
—Nancy S. Bishop, Third Coast Review

“At its best, Lauren Yee’s vibrant play with music offers a compelling exploration of survivor guilt, the urge for revenge, the deforming power of the past, and the impossibility of finding justice for crimes against humanity. Few American dramas get this close to the darkness that defies uplift.”
—Bill Marx, The Arts Fuse

“How do you put genocide on stage? Lauren Yee starts with a rock band, which is playing so loudly when we enter that the theater management offers ear plugs for any who request it. A rock concert may seem an odd, even inappropriate, way for a play about genocide to begin, but what comes next is even more jarring in this disorienting, genre-bending show that shifts tone and time and focus—and may arguably be the best way, perhaps the only way, Yee could have told the story she wanted to tell.”
—Jonathan Mandell, DC Theatre Scene

“Want something significant? Dark? Potentially disturbing? Cambodian Rock Band is an increasingly scary drama about the Khmer Rouge nightmare of the late 1970s, backed by a dozen mad Dengue Fever songs blazed out by a hot band. Very sharply written by Lauren Yee and brilliantly performed by an exceptional ensemble of six actor/musicians, Cambodian Rock Band is a seriously entertaining show.”
—Michael Sommers, New York Stage Review

“What happens when the music stops? What happens when it vanishes, is banned, or even becomes punishable by death? That’s one of the hooks that draws audiences into Lauren Yee’s Cambodian Rock Band, by turns a boisterous, solemn, and periodically campy…Like Fela!, Hamilton, and even Hedwig and the Angry Inch before it, Cambodian Rock Band uses historic realities and tragedies to tell a universal story of humans embracing art to transcend the most hellish struggles of personal pain and irreparable loss…Music endures, humans persist, and this music triumphs, becoming a sound for new generations to share, enjoy, and grow with, even as it outlives many of its original creators. What makes for a more defiant triumph than that?”
—Steven Pearl, Rolling Stone

“Crazily clever and compelling, this play is a joyful work about a genocidal history, a gentle dramedy about a father-daughter relationship, an increasingly intense thriller about a friendship put into the most unfriendly of circumstances, a tragi-comedy about a country where music was in its soul until it was banned, and a tale of pursuing justice when survival and innocence are contradictions.”
—Steven Oxman, Chicago Sun-Times

“The cast also doubles as the show’s live band, knocking out tunes that encapsulate the play’s marriage of substance and style. This was the kind of music played by Chum and his friends—the sound the Khmer Rouge sought to wipe out—and there’s no way to hear it, joyful though it is, without a sense of loss. The guitars shred your heart.”
—Alex Huntsberger, Time Out Chicago

“Lauren Yee is one of this country’s premier playwrights, her works transcending genre and form, tapping into emotional truths embedded in deep cultural specificity. To see a Lauren Yee play is to take a glimpse into the hope and promise of how the American theater can truly thrive and succeed. Cambodian Rock Band is no exception. So, what are you waiting for? The band’s ready to play.”
—Ben Kaye, Newcity Stage

Lauren Yee is a playwright born and raised in San Francisco. She currently lives in New York City.

Her play Cambodian Rock Band, with music by Dengue Fever, premiered at South Coast Rep and is at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival this season, followed by La Jolla Playhouse and Victory Gardens. Her play The Great Leap has been produced at the Denver Center, Seattle Repertory, Atlantic Theatre, and the Guthrie, with future productions at Arts Club and InterAct Theatre. Also upcoming: The Song of Summer at Trinity Rep.

Yee’s play King of the Yees premiered at The Goodman Theatre and Center Theatre Group, followed by productions at ACT Theatre, Canada’s National Arts Centre, and Baltimore Center Stage. Other plays include Ching Chong Chinaman (Pan Asian, Mu Performing Arts), The Hatmaker's Wife (Playwrights Realm, Moxie, PlayPenn), Hookman (Encore, Company One), In a Word (SF Playhouse, Cleveland Public, Strawdog), Samsara (Victory Gardens, O’Neill Conference, Bay Area Playwrights Festival), and The Tiger Among Us (MAP Fund, Mu).

She was a Dramatists Guild fellow, a MacDowell fellow, a MAP Fund grantee, a member of The Public Theater’s Emerging Writers Group, a Time Warner Fellow at the Women’s Project Playwrights Lab, the Shank playwright-in-residence at Second Stage Theatre, a Playwrights’ Center Core Writer, and the Page One resident playwright at Playwrights Realm.

She is the winner of the Horton Foote Prize, the Kesselring Prize, and the Francesca Primus Prize. She has been a finalist for the Edward M. Kennedy Prize, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the ATCA/Steinberg Award, the Jerome Fellowship, the PONY Fellowship, the Princess Grace Award, the Sundance Theatre Lab, the Wasserstein Prize. Her play The Hatmaker’s Wife was an Outer Critics Circle nominee for the John Gassner Award for best play by a new American playwright. Her plays were the #1 and #2 plays on the 2017 Kilroys List.

Yee is a member of the Ma-Yi Theatre Writers Lab, a 2018/2019 Hodder fellow at Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts, and a New Dramatists playwright (class of 2025). She is currently under commission from the Geffen Playhouse, La Jolla Playhouse, Lincoln Center Theatre/LCT3, Mixed Blood Theatre, Portland Center Stage, Second Stage Theatre, South Coast Rep, and Trinity Rep. She has written for MIXTAPE (Netflix). BA: Yale. MFA: UCSD.