For the past couple years, I've been collaborating on a musical adaption of Ten Things I Hate About You with Lena Dunham, Carly Rae Jepsen and Ethan Gruska. My inner 13-year-old is still freaking out about adapting her all time favorite movie for the stage. This brilliant, kind, inspiring team of collaborators makes the writing process a total delight. You can read more the about project and my collaborators here.
This summer, I'll teach an online course: Writing for Television. Through a partnership between The Playwrights' Center and Augsburg University, this class introduces the process and business of ideating, developing, and pitching a television show. Students will learn what makes a good TV idea, experiment with adapting stories they love to the medium of television and develop original concepts. The class can be taken for college credit, and is available for folks of all ages! Applications are due by MAY 23. You can read more about the class and apply here.
In November, Mother of Exiles will have its world premiere at Berkeley Rep. I'm overjoyed to bring this multigenerational, genre-shifting, time-traveling passion project of mine to life with such a generous partner and at such a beautiful home. You can read more about Berkeley Rep’s full 2025/26 season here.
In September, I was hired onto the IRT Artistic Team as their next James Still Playwright in Residence. As a part of this three-year residency, I get to develop a new play for the theatre: an adaptation of H. G. Wells’ science fiction survival story The War of the Worlds. My adaptation will touch on themes of individualism and community, survival, and what it means to stay human in a moment of full-blown disaster - and will, of course, be eerie, thrilling, and fun! You can read more about the commission here.
In December, the Minneapolis Star Tribune named Blended 和 (Harmony) one of the Best Twin Cities Productions of 2024. Reviewer Rohan Preston calls Blended 和 (Harmony) "a winning work that evokes Hollywood’s golden age with a neat twist... With its revelatory history and stylish telling, “Harmony” deserves to be seen again and again." You can read more here.
In June, I'm being featured in playwright Amy Wheeler's Play Club - a new national book club for theatre lovers. Members will read and discuss Mother of Exiles, and I'll join for a live Zoom conversation and Q&A. You can read more about Play Club here.
For the next three years, I’ll get to work with IRT as their Playwright in Residence. I’m a midwestern girl, and the combination of IRT’s personal, human care and celebration of the joy and impact of theater have created the kind of artistic community that feels just like home to me. I’m overjoyed that I get to dream into the future with Benjamin Hanna, whose vision and leadership I so admire, and to follow in the footsteps of the incredible James Still, whose artistry and generosity are an inspiration. You can read more about the residency here.
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.