This Summer, I’ll head to New Harmony, Indiana for The New Harmony Project’s 2023 conference. I’ll join thirteen other writers and more than 40 collaborators in receiving support from The Project’s artistic team. You can read more about the conference here.
In March, New York Stage and Film will host a reading of my play Birth of the Pill as part of their 2023 Winter Season. You can read more about the reading here.
I just got back from an amazing workshop at Timeline Theatre Company for my new adaptation of The Birth of the Pill (book by the incredibly collaborative and generous Jonathan Eig). TimeLine commissioned this play, and it was incredible to hear the draft out loud, in person, after working on the play during the darkest days of the pandemic.
Venturous Theater Fund and the Playwrights’ Center have partnered on a fellowship program that supports playwrights through the advancement of ambitious, risk-taking, and innovative plays by providing writers with two years of residency funding and production advocacy at partner theaters.
Nominator Carson Kreitzer had this to say: “Jessica Huang's Mother of Exiles has lingered in my mind ever since I watched the Playwrights' Center Zoom reading, in deep pandemic time, alone in my office, breathing, laughing, weeping. This is a Venturous play in all ways. At once breathtakingly epic and breathtakingly intimate... A play about climate, a play about love, a play about family, generations, hope, despair... a play of Survival.”
You can learn more about the fellowship and read the other 49 incredible plays on the list here!
This Spring, The Paper Dreams of Harry Chin has two in-person productions coming up across the country. Starting in April, Indiana Repertory Theater will open their production, directed by Jaki Bradley. This production was just about to begin tech as theaters closed down in March 2020, and now two years later the entire cast is back! You can also catch this production virtually.
Buy Virtual or In-Person Tickets for the IRT Production here.
In May, San Francisco Playhouse will open their production, directed by Jeffery Lo.
Buy Tickets for the San Francisco Playhouse Production here.
In April, Audible releases my eco-noir audio play, Song of the Northwoods. The play follows Song Kuan as she devotes herself to recording Ice Cold Cases, a true crime podcast which she and her friend Lucy co-host with the gleeful energy of obsessed fans—until an anonymous tip about a missing person case disrupts their equilibrium. Then Lucy disappears, leaving Song alone in an unfriendly and unfamiliar town, where locals don’t take kindly to strangers asking questions. Twisty, unpredictable, and sonically adventurous, Song of the Northwoods will keep you guessing until the final showdown.
My play Transmissions in Advance of the Second Great Dying just won first prize in the Earth Matters On Stage festival, which will have a production as a part of the festival at Emory College in Atlanta later this year.
Transmissions was also recently included in 100 Plays to Save the World: a guide to one hundred plays drawn from around the world, written by one hundred different writers, and demonstrating a vast span of styles, genres and cast sizes – all speaking to an aspect of the climate emergency.
My friend Amy Wheeler is launching Play Club, which I will be a part of next fall. Play Club is a book club with a theatrical twist; members read and discuss a play each month, then join a conversation with the featured playwright. This spring, Play Club features the incredible playwrights Lynn Nottage, Sarah Ruhl, Eisa Davis and Ellen McLaughlin.
Read more here.
It’s International Women’s Day, and the Broadway Women’s Fund has just announced their second annual Women to Watch on Broadway. I am so excited to appear on their list alongside so many extraordinary theater-makers.
As Sagittarius season comes to a close, I am delighted to announce that I have been selected as a finalist for the 2021 Page 73 Fellowship. I’m so honored to be among my inspiring co-finalists: Bleu Beckford-Burrell, Marvin González De León, April Ranger, and Haygen-Brice Walker. Now in its 18th year, the Page 73 Playwriting Fellowship is the company's most prestigious award, annually supporting a playwright who has yet to have a professional premiere in New York City. Last year I was an Interstate 73 Writers Group Fellow with P73, and I'm so grateful for their continued support of my work.
It's less than a month until National New Play Network will present a virtual reading of Mother of Exiles as part of their annual National Showcase of New Plays. Starting on Thursday, November 19, 2020, the three-day event will showcase my play alongside plays by Alexis Scheer, Candrice Jones, Francisca Da Silveira, and Vera Starbard.
It's October, I'm hunkered down in New York, and I've recently been selected as a semifinalist for the 2021 Page 73 Playwriting Fellowship. Now in its 18th year, the Page 73 Playwriting Fellowship is the company's most prestigious award, annually supporting a playwright who has yet to have a professional premiere in New York City. I’m honored to be among my inspiring co-semifinalists, Bleu Beckford Burrell, Lyndsey Bourne, Steph Del Rosso, Jahna Ferron-Smith, Marvin González De León, Dylan Guerra, Majkin Holmquist, Emma Horwitz, Roger Q Mason, April Ranger, Andrew Sianez-De La O, and Haygen-Brice Walker. The thirteen of us were selected from more than 400 applicants, the largest application pool to date. Last year I was an Interstate 73 Writers Group Fellow with P73, and I'm so grateful for their continued support of my work.
It’s one short month until Boulder CO’s premier festival of new American plays: Local Theater’s Local Lab. On March 15, they will stage a reading of Mother of Exiles to close out their festival. The play follows the Loi family’s journey through America across 200 years—as they are ushered along by the spirits of their ancestors. In 1898 California, a pregnant Eddie Loi faces deportation. In 1998 Miami, her grandson Braulio accidentally summons her spirit while patrolling the border. In 2098 somewhere on the ocean, their descendants try to survive.
It’s less than a month until the New York Stage & Film Company hosts a free public reading of my play Mother of Exiles, directed by Tyne Rafaeli. We will present the reading on November 4th, as part of NYSAF’s Fall Reading Series at Barnard College.
Reserve tickets here.
It’s autumn and I’m in New York. But I’m looking forward to winter in Creede, Colorado; spring in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; summer in McCall, Idaho; and next autumn in Ely, Minnesota. It’s an honor to spend the next four seasons with the support and collaboration of National New Play Network (NNPN), HBMG, Ignition Arts, Seven Devils, and Tofte Lake Center, as the inaugural 4 Seasons resident. Over the years, I have been lucky to receive several opportunities to work on my plays with the support of retreat centers; these periods of stillness and deep creative focus have been instrumental in focusing, reenergizing, and inspiring complexity and deep honesty in my work. I am overwhelmed by the abundance of the 4 Seasons Residency—four distinct and beautiful suspended moments to think, explore, and encourage new work to arise from the quiet. The experience will culminate at NNPN’s Showcase of New Plays.
More info here.
It’s September in New York, and I’m getting ready to work with the New York Stage & Film Company again, this time as a part of their Fall Reading Series at Barnard College. On November 4th we will present a free public reading of my play Mother of Exiles. The play follows the Loi family’s journey through America across 200 years, as they are ushered along by the spirits of their ancestors. In 1898 California, a pregnant Eddie Loi faces deportation. In 1998 Miami, her grandson Braulio decides who stays and who goes. In 2098 somewhere on the ocean, their descendants sail toward a new country, fleeing climate crisis.
More info here.
It’s September 2019 and I’m back in New York. These days I’m at Juilliard, where we’re rehearsing a workshop production of my play Transmissions in Advance of the Second Great Dying. My husband, Ricardo Vazquez, is directing. In the rehearsal room, we’re in the year 2043 and Earth’s human and non-human inhabitants are grappling with grief and global warming. Katrina and her unborn baby head north in search of snow; Hugo seeks purpose in a world without resources; and recently widowed Carla is swept into a cosmic relationship with an ageless Being. Together with a young lynx and a swarm of locusts, their journeys become transmissions of hope and loss against the backdrop of planetary collapse.
Performances are on the third floor at The Juilliard School (155 West 65th Street), and take place Thursday through Saturday, September 5th - 7th.
In July, I'll be workshopping my new play, Mother of Exiles, at Chance Theater. Mother of Exiles follows the Loi family’s journey through America across 200 years—as they are ushered along by the spirits of their ancestors. In 1898, a pregnant Eddie Loi faces deportation. In 1998, her grandson Braulio decides who stays and who goes. In 2098, their descendants sail toward a new country, fleeing climate crisis.
I was selected to participate in The Ground Floor: Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s Center for the Creation and Development of New Work for its 2019 Summer Residency Lab. The artists, selected from a pool of more than 620 submissions, developed new works at the company’s Harrison Street campus throughout the month of June. In collaboration with Ashley Hanson, I wrote a new musical, The Kim Loo Sisters Musical, about sisters who shared top billing with Frank Sinatra, Jackie Gleason, and Ann Miller.