Leslie Lee was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania on November 6, 1930. He was Executive Director of the Negro Ensemble Company and a founding artist of La Mama E.T.C. He was also Signature Theatre's Playwright-in-Residence during the 2008-2009 Season celebrating the Historic Negro Ensemble Company. His plays have been produced both on and off Broadway, and he wrote extensively for film and television.
After receiving his Bachelor of Arts degree in Biology and English from The University of Pennsylvania, Lee worked for several years in cancer research at Wyeth Laboratories in Villanova, Pennsylvania. He earned his Master of Arts degree in Theatre from Villanova University.
Lee taught for The Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing Program at the NYU Tisch School of the Arts, MiddleSex Community College, Hunter College, Wesleyan College, Rutgers University, The New School University, Goddard College, The Negro Ensemble Company, and The Frederick Douglas Playwriting Workshop. In 2008, the U.S. Department of State sent Lee as a Cultural Envoy to Bulawayo, Zimbabwe to teach Playwriting at the Intwasa Arts Festival.
Lee's acclaimed play The First Breeze of Summer, directed by Ruben Santiago-Hudson and starring Leslie Uggams, enjoyed a successful revival in 2008 at Signature Theatre, winning nine Audelco Awards. The First Breeze of Summer was originally produced by the Negro Ensemble Company and went on to win an Obie Award for Best New American Play as well as an Outer Critics Circle Award. Subsequently, the play moved to the Palace Theatre on Broadway, where it received a Tony Award nomination for Best Play. Many of his plays have been produced by the Negro Ensemble Company, the Black Rep in St. Louis, and Crossroads Theatre Company in New Jersey. His plays include The War Party, Colored People's Time, Blues in a Broken Tongue, The Rabbit's Foot, Black Eagles, Elegy to a Down Queen, Cops and Robbers, Hannah Davis, The Ninth Wave, The Book of Lambert, Mina, Sundown Names and Night-Gone Things and the musicals Golden Boy with songs by Charles Strouse and Lee Adams, and Phillis with Micki Grant. His new musical Before The Dream, written with Charles Strouse, had a recent reading in New York.
Lee's television and film work includes The Vernon Johns Story, with James Earl Jones and Mary Alice; Two Mothers, Two Sons; The Killing Floor, with Alfre Woodard and Moses Gunn; and adaptations of Richard Wright's short story Almos' A Man, with LeVar Burton, and The First Breeze of Summer. His documentary work includes Langston Hughes, the Dreamkeeper; The Massachusetts Fifty-Fourth Regiment; Ralph Bunche: An American Odyssey; and Culture Shock: Huckleberry Finn.
Leslie Lee passed away at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York City due to complications from congestive heart failure on January 20, 2014, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, as he was making final revisions to his musical about King (written in collaboration with Charles Strouse).
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