Brian and Dayna Lee
Courtesy AF Creative Media
Dayna and Brian Lee and their production company, AF Creative Media, have emerged as powerful forces in theater. Just last month they won Olivier Awards for their West End shows Giant and Fiddler On The Roof. And their proverbial mantle already has three Tony Awards, including one for co-producing Angels in America, which they won within a year of launching AF Creative Media.
The duo are also producers of the play Here There Are Blueberries, which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and recently garnered two Lucille Lortel Awards. Their New York Theatre Workshop production of Becoming Eve just had a sold out run. And it was recently announced that they are executive producing Jeremiah Zagar’s film, the Painted Bride, starring Jeremy Allen White, Mandy Patinkin, and Isabella Rossellini.
Also in the works is Ben Shirinian’s film, the Housewife, with Naomi Watts and Michael Imperioli. Oh, and they are co-producers of The Who’s Tommy, Company, Funny Girl, Moulin Rouge, Dead Outlaw, and Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club.
Partners in life and art, Dayna and Brian, who have been married since 2017, have a meet-cute straight out of a rom-com. The couple grew up five minutes away from each other in the Toronto suburbs. But it wasn’t until they were both in their second semester at Berklee College of Music, in Boston, when they officially met for the first time.
“I saw Dayna when she walked into class and had this feeling like I knew her forever,” says Brian. They ultimately discovered they shared a vocal coach and attended the same parties. “It’s so surreal because we had crossed paths so many times, but never actually met each other,” adds Dayna.
From across the room Brian happened to hear Dayna telling someone that she was from Toronto. “I barreled towards her to tell her that I’m from Toronto too,” recalls Brian. “She said, ‘What are you doing now?’ And I said, ‘I need to eat.’ And she replied, ‘I’m taking you for the best vegan chili in Boston.’ And we have been inseparable ever since.”
While Brian instantly knew Dayna was the one from the get-go, it took Dayna a little bit longer. “I waited for two years for her to realize that I was right,” says Brian. “And I would have waited for ten years if I had to.”
After two years of friendship, Dayna, as she explains, “eventually came to my senses.” When Brian’s parents visited they invited Dayna to join the family for dinner. “In between bottle of wine number one and bottle of wine number two, I looked at Brian and I thought to myself, oh my God, everything I have ever wanted is sitting right next to me,” says Dayna. “I knew from that moment on. And it sounds so corny and so cheesy, but it truly was out of a romantic movie.”
The couple moved to New York City after graduating from Berklee and gave themselves one year to see how it would go. Brian worked as an assistant director to directors on and Off-Broadway. Dayna worked at music licensing companies. Simultaneously, they launched a side hustle sharing their experiences about living in New York on their instagram page @artsfoodfamily. “We had around 10,000 followers and started getting hired as influencers for social media creation,” says Brian.
Meanwhile, they each felt a pull to work together and began exploring what it would mean to create a production company. “I had worked as a director and absolutely loved it,” says Brian who when he was 16-years old ran a nonprofit theater company and was deeply passionate about musicals.
“What I came to learn is that no one really tells you what a producer does. Then you start observing and you realize that the way a show exists and lives in the world is producing. I very much fell in love with the idea of being in process from the ground up, long before you even enter the rehearsal room.”
At that point they had been living in New York City for two years and knew that the time was right to join forces as producers. “We said, if we were going to take a risk, it would be now,” says Dayna. “We looked at each other on our honeymoon and said, ‘Let’s do it. Let’s give it a shot.’”
Their first venture was the play People, Place and Things which they had seen in London and rocked their world. The devastating sold-out show centered a woman dealing with addiction in a way that we don’t usually see.
“After the lights came up, we looked at each other and we said, “This is the type of work we want to produce. When the show transferred stateside to St. Ann’s Warehouse they cold-called asking to be involved. “We knew nothing and committed to raising our first enhancement for the St. Ann’s production of People, Places and Things,” says Brian. “That was our first introduction into the world of co-producing.”
From there they co-produced the hit revival of Angels in America. That success gave them the confidence to become lead producers and meet everyone they could, however they could.
“We read more scripts, more books and reached out to agents and saw what scripts they had or what writers that made them excited. We took more meetings and expanded our network,” says Dayna. “Through that exploration, we truly began to understand our taste and vocabulary and the stories we wanted to tell.”
For Brian, the process of creating theater on Broadway was similar to when he launched a community theater company when he was a teenager. “The first show I ever produced, and directed and designed and sold tickets for was the Toronto premiere of Little Women” he says. “In all honesty, looking back on all of it, nothing has really changed except for the stakes. We are still making shows with people we love and telling stories that we believe in.”
Dayna and Brian are devoted to bringing that sense of meaning and joy to audiences. “Someone said to me, “all I have to do is look at your work to know who you are,” says Brian. “I think that is important. We champion stories that say what we want to say in this world.” The legacy that they wish to leave behind remains paramount. “I just want to create something that our parents can look at and say, “Wow, I’m really proud of you” and that our children can learn from and one day say, “that is so amazing that you did that,” says Dayna. “‘You made that happen.’”
Jeryl Brunner: How has becoming producers changed you and your connection to one another?
Dayna Lee: Working together has made us so much stronger. Having a family together has put work into perspective and vice versa. It is amazing to be with each other for all of the little moments—holding each other in the difficult ones and cheering each other on in the amazing ones.
Jeryl Brunner: What inspires you to take on a project?
Dayna Lee: We often love finding projects that an audience can enter with familiarity about the topic but show them something completely new. How can we engage with them in a way that only theater can do?
Brian Lee: I think of Here There Are Blueberries by Moises Kauffman and Amanda Gronich. It is a Pulitzer Prize finalist that is surprising audiences by teaching them things about the Holocaust that they think they knew. It is so masterfully done and stops audiences in their tracks. There is power in surprising audiences with things they forget they know.
Jeryl Brunner: Why was it important to create @artsfoodfamily?
Brian Lee: @artsfoodfamily is how we started everything. It’s like our inner theater kid gone wild. At the beginning, we were food influencers eating our way through New York and amassed this following. We have chronicled our struggle to have children, what it’s like to work together, be parents and raise these three amazing, phenomenal little ones all under the age of four. It is sort of the best scrapbook of our lives together.
Dayna Lee: We also are really thoughtful about ensuring that people know that it’s not all rainbows and butterflies. We’re all on this journey and we’re all figuring it out. We feel so lucky to have cultivated an audience that shares in our experience. It has also taught us so much about creating content and about knowing your audience. We try not to take ourselves too seriously online. It’s nice to have a platform in which you just get to be expressive. I hope that after seeing our content people feel a sense of joy. We’re all just figuring it out one day at a time.
Jeryl Brunner: Can you share more about producing Becoming Eve, based on Abby Chava Stein’s memoir about growing up in an ultra-Orthodox community and coming out as a transgender woman?
Brian Lee: I got a phone call from my mother that she had read this book called Becoming Eve and that she thought it would make an excellent play. We reached out to Abby and spoke about how we felt her memoir could be adapted for the stage. To us, it was an unbelievable story that bridged the gaps between gender, modernity, tradition and forced readers to truly look internally and could teach real empathy.
Dayna Lee: And after that, it was about finding the perfect people to tell Abby’s story. We brought on [playwright] Emil Weinstein and it just clicked. He understood the colors, shapes and vulnerability needed to allow audiences from all walks of life to experience this story and truly see each other for who they are.
Brian Lee: The final ingredient was our astonishing director, Tyne Rafaeli, who brought an incredible sense of visual storytelling and clarity on how this narrative could live on the stage. The trouble with adapting a memoir is it’s so expansive. The framing device of the play is actually the last chapter of the memoir in which Abby has a conversation and comes out to her Hasidic father. She uses Biblical text and Rabbinical interpretation to appeal to him in a language that he will understand. It is so beautiful and heartbreaking.
Dayna: The most beautiful thing about Becoming Eve is that at the core of it, it’s a story about a father and a daughter trying to love each other through insurmountable obstacles. That is something so human and so relatable. It defies religion, gender and circumstances.
Jeryl Brunner: When you heard “no” or were rejected, what inspired you to keep going?
Dayna Lee: I don’t think a “no” is ever a “no”. I think “no” is “not right now.” There are creative ways to turn a “no” into a “yes” or to create an alternative solution. We love a challenge. I think back to my childhood when a lot of people underestimated me. I got a lot of “no’s” and a lot of people who perceived me to be in one specific box. I have worked really hard to prove that I can do anything I set my mind to. A “no” can sometimes lead you to accomplish more than you thought possible and light a fire towards finding a “yes.”
Brian Lee: I also love a challenge. After all, I waited two years for Dayna to date me. I am very guilty of comparing myself to others. But the truth is, the key is to stick to your own path and stay in your lane. Everyone has their own unique set of skills and it is about finding out how your skills apply to each project.
