Namoo Chae Lee is a UK-based theatre director and writer originally from South Korea. Working between text, movement, and music, her work explores cultural inheritance and contemporary identity through an East Asian female lens.

Namoo’s work combines detailed textual analysis with precise visual composition, integrating naturalistic performance with structured physicality. Drawing on UK directing traditions, breath-led techniques informed by Korean movement practices, and a background in American musical theatre, she creates work that is both formally rigorous and sensorially driven. Her practice interrogates Western theatrical canons while developing new work with contemporary writers, shaped by professional training and experience across three continents.

Working as a Korean artist in the UK, she explores the tension between cultural inheritance, migration, and patriarchal structures. This inquiry led her to found KASSNA, an interdisciplinary collective dedicated to creating space for East Asian female voices.

Her work is characterised by formal clarity, musical and physical precision, and a sustained commitment to re-examining inherited narratives through a contemporary feminist lens.

Namoo was a Headlong Origins Director 5.0 and formerly the Resident Assistant Director at the Orange Tree Theatre. She holds MFAs in Theatre Directing from Birkbeck, University of London, and Musical Theatre Writing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.