Works

Quotes/Reviews

• “at once a mystical, memory-filled, pragmatically painful, and harshly truthful tale… Ms. Huang… [has] created a unique story-telling style which is fresh and compelling” Ken Klingenmeier, A Seat on the Aisle

• “a remarkably poetic work… The beautiful dreams and poetry of the script by Jessica Huang, clash with racist realities in mid-century America and create a haunting play” Ethel Winslow, The Weekly View

• “The Paper Dreams of Harry Chin is must-see theatre at its finest.” Steve Murray, Broadway World

• “A fascinating, surreal journey” Sally Hogarty, East Bay Times

• “[a] beautifully written time-traveling play” Lily Janiak, San Francisco Chronicle

• “Harry is a man haunted... That might not sound like the description of a show that frequently ventures into comedic territory, but playwright Huang is wise enough to know that the audience needs a breather from all the heavy family drama and strange goings-on that may or may not be supernatural.” Charles Lewis III, 48 Hills

• “rewarding new play "The Paper Dreams of Harry Chin" offers a complex telling of a complex life” Ed Hyuck, Minneapolis Star Tribune

• “a surreal journey through past and present that is touching, funny, harrowing, confusing—and ultimately worth seeing.” Kip Dooley, Minnesota Playlist

• “Huang’s superb storytelling keeps us engaged with this complex, and all too timely, tale.” Jay Gabler, City Pages

• “The play never fails to hold interest, but some scenes soar in their power. One is the interrogation scene as Harry arrives at the Seattle point of entry, feverishly hoping for his "paper son" deception to work. As Harry does not yet know English, we hear the interrogator as Harry does—an outpouring of gibberish, presented as fierce animalistic roars, grunts and whistles, amplified like the powerful Wizard of Oz.” Arthur Dorman, Talkin Broadway

• It’s easy to remark on the timeliness of this production—with current immigration policy trying to prohibit another specific group from being allowed into the US, its place in the season is almost uncanny. While timely and relevant sound like operable words, it’s more than just that. Stories like this keep repeating themselves and American history is full of them. It’s timely because prejudice and xenophobia never stopped being a problem and because it’s a story we still fail to remember. However, Harry Chin’s will haunt you, just like the ghosts who fill up his kitchen. You won’t be able to forget him once you leave the theater. And, like me, you might walk out feeling hungry—for knowledge, for diversity, for answers, for change.” The Room Where it Happens

Song of the Northwoods

Synopsis

After a betrayal at work costs Song Kuan her job, she retreats to her friend Lucy’s idyllic family cabin on a lake in Minnesota to lick her wounds. She devotes herself to recording Ice Cold Cases, a true crime podcast which she and 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.

Developmental HISTORY

Commission, Audible

Awards

• Named one of Audible’s Best of 2022

Listen to Song of the Northwoods Here.

Mother of Exiles

SYNOPSIS

In 1898 California, a pregnant Eddie Loi faces deportation. In 1998 Miami, her grandson Braulio accidentally summons her spirit while patrolling the border. In 2063 somewhere on the ocean, their descendants try to survive the climate crisis. An epic multigenerational tale of sacrifice, love and survival that spans 150 years in 90 minutes.

DEVELOPMENTAL HISTORY

Reading, Alliance/Kendeda Week (May 2021)
Reading, Two River Theater (April 2021)
Reading, Annual Showcase of new plays National New Play Network (November 2020)
Festival, PlayLabs The Playwrights Center (October 2020)
Reading, The New Group (July 2020) as a part of their Facing the Rising Tide festival
Workshop, New York Stage and Film’s fall season (November 2019)
Workshop, The Old Globe (October 2019)
Workshop, Chance Theater
Development, Hedgebrook Women Playwrights Festival

Awards

• 2020 Paul Stephen Lim Playwriting Award

• 2020 Rosa Parks Playwriting award

• Finalist for the 2020 Kendeda Prize

Blended 和 (Harmony): The Kim Loo Sisters Musical

Synopsis

The children of a Polish immigrant and Chinese “Paper Son,” the Kim Loo Sisters, raised in Minneapolis, attended the same dance classes as the Andrews Sisters. Alice, Maggie, Jenée, and Bubbles’ singing and dancing vaudeville routines took them to Broadway, Hollywood, and the world on the USO circuit during World War II; they shared billing with Frank Sinatra, Jackie Gleason and Ann Miller. These extraordinary women could have been famous, inspiring generations of hapa (mixed-race Asian) girls. Today, their names are forgotten. The Kim Loo Sisters Musical tells the true story of the Sisters and juxtapose the Hollywood glamour of the 1930s and 40s with darker realities for artists of color during the era of Chinese Exclusion, Internment Camps and anti-miscegenation laws. 

PRODUCTION HISTORY

History Theatre & Theater Mu (2024)

Developmental HISTORY

Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s Ground Floor Summer Lab (2019)
New York Stage and Film (2021)
Commission, History Theatre & Theater Mu

Purple Cloud

Synopsis

When you’re hapa, you know deep down you’re greater than the sum of your many parts. In Purple Cloud, three generations of Huangs deal with the multifacets of their multiracial identities as—accompanied by four Jade Pieces—they embark on a mythical journey from China to Minnesota and back again. Through three intertwining stories, the Huang family acculturates: Grandpa Lee emigrates from Shanghai to America during the Sino-Japanese War; his son Orville deals with his confusion as a first generation Asian American; and his granddaughter fights for her Chinese-ness through the search for her true name.

Quotes/Reviews

• “a thoughtful and ultimately universal exploration of what it means to belong.” Lisa Brock, Star Tribune

• “a thoroughly entertaining and moving work.” Ed Huyck, City Pages

• “a beautiful play, with the rare kind of script that strikes you instantly with the excellence of its writing.” Compendium

• “one of the most powerful and moving scenes I’ve witnessed in theater. It pulled together the various threads of the play in the ways that only true art can. By the play’s end, I realized I had just witnessed something unprecedented, something—contrary to Hewitt’s generalizing and unfocused eye—entirely new: The birth of a hapa tradition.” David Mura, Op Ed, Pioneer Press

Production HIstory

Asian American Theatre Project, Stanford CA 2017
Consortium of Asian American Theaters and Artists, Oregon Shakespeare Festival 2016 (remount of Mu production)
PREMIERE: Mu Performing Arts, Minneapolis MN 2015

Awards

• Susan Smith Blackburn Nominee

• Kilroy List Honorable Mention

• Source Festival finalist

Photographed by Keri Pickett

The Journalists’ Creed: (Actual) Emails from a (Brief) Career in News (one act)

Synopsis

Written completely with "found text" - actual emails sent and received between the years 2005 and 2013 - THE JOURNALISTS’ CREED is a strange semi-autobiographical exploration of post-college career and first love. An experiment with representing truth and fact on stage.

Photographed by Jenna Papke