After coming back from the O’Neill, I went to Theater J to workshop my commissioned play called Do You Think I’m Annoying? It culminated in a small invited reading, directed by Shannon Tyo and featuring Sydney Lo, Momo Nakamura, Sarah Suzuki, and Grace Carter.
12 CHAIRS at the O'Neill
I spent a month at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center as part of the National Playwrights Conference. I workshopped 12 Chairs with my director Charlotte Murray, dramaturg Charles Haugland, literary associate Aysha Zackria, and the cast – featuring Amanda Centeno, Arielle Gonzalez, Shawn Jain, Ben Langhorst, Angel Lin, Frankie Placidi, and Jack MacGregor. The workshop culminated in two presentations on July 4 and 6, respectively.
The Lehrstücke at Ma-Yi + 2g
In June, Ma-Yi Theater Company and 2g presented readings of my Lehrstücke BAGS and Always Eat the Food at the GLOW Cultural Center in Flushing, Queens. A culmination of my 2-year Creatives Rebuild New York residency with the Artist Employment Program at Ma-Yi Theater Company, the plays were presented directly to working-class Asian American community members, with food provided and panel discussions organized by Nancy Bulalacao and led by State Senator Julia Salazar, organizer and former Assembly Member Yuh-Line Niou, organizer Rima Begum, and organizer Hailie Kim.
BAGS was directed by Chongren Fan and featured Sonnie Brown, Katie May Porter, Jillian Sun, and Anzi DeBenedetto.
Always Eat the Food was directed by Aneesha Kudtarkar and featured Purva Bedi, Golam Sarwar Harun (who also translated the play into Bangla), Jasmine Sharma, and Arjun Dhawan.
ON THE CLOCK at Egg & Spoon Incubate NYC
A reading of On the Clock will be presented by Egg & Spoon Theatre Collective on 7-8 June 2024 @ 7:30PM at the Secret Theater in Queens. The reading will be directed by Colm Summers.
Presented this year in Queens & The Bronx, Egg & Spoon Theatre Collective’s INCUBATE NYC develops and presents workshop performances from writers who reside/have roots to NYC's outer boroughs.
12 CHAIRS part of the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's 2024 Summer Season →
12 Chairs will be workshopped as part of the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s 2024 summer season, its 60th anniversary! Staged readings of the play will take place on July 4 and 6.
The National Playwrights Conference — the O’Neill’s founding program — is a national laboratory offering resources vital to creative risk-taking. Every year, innovative, unproduced works are selected from a pool of 1,300+ submissions to be developed with the support of a professional company of actors, designers, dramaturgs, and directors. For this development, the Conference proudly implements a staged reading process born of the workshop model developed early in the O’Neill’s history by its founder, George C. White, and NPC’s inaugural artistic director, Lloyd Richards. The remaining time in each writer’s four-week residency is self-directed — to think, create, and interact with other artists. This year’s talented group of writers join a cadre of O’Neill playwright alumni who have reimagined the American theater in fundamental ways, including August Wilson, David Henry Hwang, Wendy Wasserstein, Jeremy O. Harris, Dominique Morisseau, Martnya Majok, and more.
Rattlestick Theater's Terrence McNally New Works Incubator →
Rattlestick Theatre, the Terrence McNally Foundation, and Tom Kirdahy Productions revealed the Terrence McNally New Works Incubator Cycle 2 Fellows: playwrights Jesse Jae Hoon, Sam Mueller, and Eliana Theologides Rodriguez.
As a continuation of Terrence McNally’s singular legacy of mentorship, and his commitment to fostering bold new voices in the American theater, the Incubator is designed to support these ambitious early-career playwrights by giving them time and space to develop their work, professional mentorship with veteran playwrights, and access to the community of artists and work being developed at Rattlestick and Tom Kirdahy Productions. Inaugural fellowships were awarded in 2023 to Molly Herron Bicks, HyoJeong Choi, and Haygen-Brice Walker.
“We are thrilled by the success of our inaugural cohort in 2023, and could not be more excited to develop the work of the exceptional playwrights in our second cohort,” saya Will Davis, Rattlestick Theater Artistic Director. “We are so thankful to partner with the Terrence McNally Foundation and Tom Kirdahy Productions to offer this crucial, one-of-a-kind fellowship to emerging writers in New York."
The Cycle 2 Fellows were selected from a pool of 500 applications, in consultation with the Playwrights Advisory Council, which includes: Sheila Callaghan, Halley Feiffer, Madeleine George, Mike Lew, donja r. love, Rehana Mirza, and Lynn Nottage. This year's Incubator Finalists include Marvin González De León, Mary Hamilton, Chad Kaydo, Stefani Kuo, Elia Monte-Brown, Gage Tarlton, and Max Yu.
Part of Egg & Spoon Theatre Collective's Incubate NYC Series
Jesse Jae Hoon and Christin Eve Cato are named Egg & Spoon Theatre Collective’s INCUBATE NYC Playwrights.
Presented in Queens & The Bronx, INCUBATE NYC develops and presents workshops from writers who reside/have roots to NYC's outer boroughs. This program is generously supported by NYC Department of Cultural Affairs.
The 2023 Idea Awards for Theatre →
The Bret Adams and Paul Resich Foundation gave out the 2023 Idea Awards for Theatre December 4 at a private ceremony held at The Players. The evening saw three categories of grants awarded to new voices in playwriting and musical theatre along with the visionary playwrights that inspired them. See photos from the event below.
The Tooth of Time Distinguished Career Award went to Beth Henley (Crimes of the Heart), which includes a $25,000 prize.
Jesse Jae Hoon took the Ollie New Play Award, while Brandy Hoang Collier, Grace McLean, and the team of Clare Fuyuko Bierman and Erika Ji both received Vivace Musical Theatre Awards. Each recipient of those honors also receives a $25,000 prize.
All six Idea Award winners also received a stone statuette hand carved by Bruce Ostler.
Visit BretnPaulFoundation.org.
Winner! 2023 Ollie New Play Award →
The Bret Adams and Paul Reisch Foundation is pleased to announce the recipients of their 2023 Idea Awards for Theatre; three categories of grants awarded to adventurous new voices in playwriting and musical theatre, as well the visionary playwrights who have inspired and blazed trails before them.
The 2023 Tooth of Time Distinguished Career Award will be presented to Beth Henley (Crimes of the Heart, The Miss Firecracker Contest). Honoring accomplished playwrights who have created significant, idea-driven works throughout their career, the Tooth of Time Distinguished Career Award is given with a $25,000 prize for the recipient.
Jesse Jae Hoon is the recipient of this year’s Ollie New Play Award. Two Vivace Musical Theatre Awards will be presented; one to Brandy Hoang Collier, Clare Fuyuko Bierman and Erika Ji; and another to Grace McLean. Recognizing emerging talent and original work with ambitious theatrical ideas, both awards are bestowed to each recipient with a $25,000 prize.
Each of the six artists will also receive a unique stone statuette hand carved by Bruce Ostler.
The 2023 Idea Awards for Theatre will be presented on Monday, December 4, 2023, in a private ceremony (by invitation only) at The Players (16 Gramercy Park South, NYC). Entertainment will feature live performances by this year's Vivace Musical Theatre Award winners.
Theatrical Agent Bret Adams and his partner Dr. Paul Reisch loved the theatre with great passion. As a theatrical agent, Bret shepherded the careers of many actors, writers and directors and designers, including Phylicia Rashad, Judy Kaye, Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, Sherman Helmsley, Anna Maria Alberghetti, Eve Arden, Christine Ebersole, Kathleen Marshall, Jayne Wyman, Andre DeShields, Kathy Bates, Susan H. Schulman, Jack Heifner, Philip McKinley and Robert Harling, among many others. After Bret and Paul’s passing, in 2006 and 2015 respectively, their eponymous foundation was created at their bequest. The Bret Adams and Paul Reisch Foundation champions visionary theatre writers in their creation of expansive, illuminating, and idea-driven theatre. Embracing diversity in all its forms, The Foundation encourages artists with fresh perspectives - particularly those from underrepresented backgrounds - to create idea-driven new plays and musicals reflecting on multivalent themes. Nominations for all three awards are accepted exclusively from The Foundation’s Board of Artistic Advisors. For more information, visit www.BretnPaulFoundation.org.
The Bret Adams and Paul Reisch Foundation created the ‘Idea Awards for Theatre’ to encourage expansive, idea-driven artworks with inherently theatrical ways of illuminating big ideas and concepts,” says Sheilah Rae, V.P. and Board Member of The Bret Adams and Paul Reisch Foundation. “With our financial awards, we are encouraging artists to grapple with and dramatize the big ideas that the world is engaged with. This money will give them needed time and space to explore and write. We are proud to award the Ollie Award for the most ambitious big idea new play, the Vivace Award for a big-idea new musical that makes you want to get up and dance, and the Tooth of Time Award to encourage accomplished artists to continue their personal evolution in examining big ideas. We are giving these Awards to dare these writers to theatricalize something wild and brave.”
"Beth Henley is one of our most important living dramatists and a defining voice of the American South," says Kate Bussert, Executive Director of the BAPR Foundation. “Grace McLean is a truly multi-hyphenate, idea-driven artist who uses all of her skills to amplify her artistic vision and creates work unlike any other. And as we look to the new generation of writers in all disciplines, we are thrilled to support rising playwright Jesse Jae Hoon, whose work critiques systemic injustice with humor and heart, and the emerging musical theatre writing team of Clare Fuyuko Bierman, Brandy Hoang Collier, and Erika Ji, three incisive and intersectional artists redefining the Asian-American theatre canon. We are honored to support these six artists as they create exciting new work.
The Public Theater Announces 2023-2025 Emerging Writers Group Cohort →
The 2023-2025 cohort includes Karina Billini, Tomas Endter, Jesse Jae Hoon, Humaira Iqbal, Celeste Jennings, Nina Ki, Gloria Oladipo, Valen-Marie Santos, Amita Sharma, and Al Sierra. The playwrights were selected from over 500 applicants.
Read MoreMacDowell Fellowship 2024
In Somebody is Looking Back At Me, Olivia receives a writing residency that’s very closely based on MacDowell. I’ve received a fellowship from MacDowell for the Fall-Winter 2023-2024 season! I will be spending several weeks in the woods working on my new plays I’ve Got A Sinking Feeling in the Pit of My Stomach, BAGS, Standardized, and more.
Now participating in Ma-Yi + 2G's SHORT STACK 2
Jesse Jae Hoon will write a short play, directed by Nana Dakin, for the second iteration of Ma-Yi + 2g’s Short Stack Play Festival. Plays by Vichet Chum, Lisa Sanaye Dring, Nina Ki, Roger Q. Mason, Rehana Lew Mirza, Seyoung Yim, Max Yu, and David Zheng; with direction by Dakin, Cara Hinh, Kalina Ko, Carol Ann Tan, and Shannon Tyo.
The Parsnip Ship Announces 2023 Radio Roots Fellowship with Playwright Jesse Jae Hoon
The Parsnip Ship (Artistic Director/Host, Iyvon E.) announces the Radio Roots Fellowship with playwright Jesse Jae Hoon as a part of their Radio Roots program. The Fellowship will include a live audio recording of his play, 12 Chairs (directed by Charlotte Murray) and will become a part of The Parsnip Ship’s catalog of recorded theatrical experiences, including live music from a musical guest and an interview with the playwright. The cast will include Ben Langhorst, Angel Lin, Frankie Placidi, Amanda Centeno, Brandon Bogle, and Arielle Gonzalez.
In addition, the Fellowship includes weekly dramaturgy sessions, a writer’s retreat, and a private developmental reading.
The Radio Roots program exists to support emerging playwrights interested in re-engaging with playwrights through audio-focused storytelling, breaking away from modern traditions of visual storytelling. Much like all programming on The Parsnip Ship’s platform, Radio Roots seeks to cultivate distinct voices in theater by providing resources for the development of innovative and accessible stories for radio drama. Jae Hoon joins The Parsnip Ship as the first fellow of the Radio Roots program.
The Parsnip Ship created the Radio Roots program in 2019 to develop original radio play commissions through weekly dramaturgical and artistic support. The first iteration of the program was a writers’ group that brought together four New York City-based playwrights with varying experience with audio storytelling. Now reimagined in 2023 as a Fellowship, Radio Roots supports the fellow through the adaptation of an existing stage play into a radio play. Jae Hoon will adapt and present his satirical comedy 12 Chairs, itself an adaptation of the 1928 novel The Twelve Chairs by Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov.
The Radio Roots program is facilitated by Al Parker (Associate Artistic Director, The Parsnip Ship) and Gabriella Steinberg (Dramaturg).
The play development process includes a deep partnership with the director and a sound designer for a fully realized sound design, accumulating in the presentation of 12 Chairs on Monday, June 12, 2023.
SOMEBODY IS LOOKING BACK AT ME will be featured in Playwrights Realm's 2023 INK'D Festival →
I’ve been working with The Playwrights Realm for the past nine months on my play Somebody is Looking Back At Me. A reading of the play, again directed by Miranda Cornell, will be presented at The Loft at Theater 511 on April 25, 2023 at 3 and 7PM. Also featured will be my fellow Playwrights Realm Writing Fellows – Andrea Ambam, Alyssa Haddad-Chin, and Alex Lin.
Jesse Jae Hoon Among Recipients of $10,000 Commission From Theater J →
Theater J has announced the seven playwrights who have been selected for its Expanding the Canon initiative: Harley Elias, Zachariah Ezer, Carolivia Herron, Jesse Jae Hoon, M.J. Kang, Thaddeus McCants, and Kendell Pinkney.
Read MorePlaywrights Realm 2022-2023 Writing Fellowship
I am a 2022-2023 Writing Fellow at The Playwrights Realm, with my play Somebody is Looking Back At Me, directed once again by Miranda Cornell. Joining me as fellows are my good friend Alex Lin with LASTHUNTER, Andrea Ambam with Fragile State, and Alyssa Haddad-Chin with The Ancestry Dot Com Play. My friend Ankita Raturi will be part of the Scratchpad series with her play Nobody Plays Badminton in America.
Jesse Jae Hoon to Work in Partnership with Ma-Yi Theater Company as Recipients of Creatives Rebuild New York’s Artist Employment Program
NEW YORK — Ma-Yi Theater Company is thrilled to announce a two-year residency for playwright Jesse Jae Hoon, supported by the Creatives Rebuild New York (CRNY) Artist Employment Program (AEP), a project of the Tides Center. A freshly minted graduate of Hunter College’s MFA Playwriting Program, Jesse will work on writing projects that combine his passion for social & economic justice activism and telling stories that center Asian American experiences. Ma-Yi Theater Company will receive funds to support the collaboration, including artists’ salaries and benefits.
Designed to support employment opportunities for artists, the program is funding 98 collaborations involving a dynamic group of 300 artists employed by community-based organizations, municipalities, and tribal governments across New York State. CRNY has awarded a total of $49.9M in funding to support artists’ salaries and benefits, with an additional $11.7M in funding provided to the organizations holding employment.
“If we are to truly rebuild our amazing state, we must celebrate artists’ contributions not only to the economy but to what makes us human,” says Creatives Rebuild New York's Executive Director Sarah Calderon. “The incredible work being funded through CRNY’s Artist Employment Program underscores the importance of direct support for both individual artists and the organizations that hold their employment.”
Artist Employment Program recipients were selected through a two-stage process by a group of twenty external peer reviewers alongside CRNY staff. From an initial pool of over 2,700 written applications, 167 were shortlisted for interviews with reviewers. To view the list of 98 Artist Employment Program participants, visit https://www.creativesrebuildny.org/participants/.
For more information about Creatives Rebuild New York’s Artist Employment Program, please visit creativesrebuildny.org.
Ma-Yi Theater Company was founded in 1989 for the production and development of new plays and performance work discussing and engaging with the Filipino American experience. In 1998, responding to the growing need for a developmental venue for Pan-Asian American texts, Ma-Yi expanded its mission to include works by Asian American playwrights of all ethnicities and origins. Its numerous acclaimed productions include Lloyd Suh’s The Chinese Lady, Haruna Lee’s Suicide Forest, Mike Lew’s Teenage Dick, Qui Nguyen’s The Inexplicable Redemption of Agent G, Hansol Jung’s Wolf Play, and Lonnie Carter’s The Romance of Magno Rubio. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ma-Yi pivoted to the creation and production of digital content from Asian American artists to keep members of the community employed – this endeavor was known as Ma-Yi Studios. Ma-Yi Theater Company’s works have won a total of 10 Obie Awards, 3 Lucille Lortel Awards, an Off-Broadway Alliance Award, a Richard Rodgers Award, a Drama Desk nomination for Best Play, numerous Henry Hewes Design Award nominations, and in May 2010, a special Drama Desk award for “more than two decades of excellence and for nurturing Asian American voices in stylistically varied and engaging theatre.” Ma-Yi Theater Company is currently under the leadership of Producing Artistic Director Ralph B. Peña. For more information, visit Ma-YiTheatre.org.
JJH will take part in 2g & Ma-Yi Theater Company's SHORT STACK PLAY FEST
Jesse is one of ten playwrights involved in 2g’s Short Stack Play Fest, presented in association with Ma-Yi Theater Company. Also taking part are Christopher Chen, Dustin Chinn, Kimber Lee, Durra Leung, Alex Lin, Kate Rigg, Arif Silverman, Lloyd Suh, and Ran Xia, with direction from Miranda Cornell, Nana Dakin, Cara Hinh, Margaret Lee, and Ry Szelong.
JJH will be part of the Orchard Project's Inaugural Adaptation Lab →
Jesse Jae Hoon has been announced as one of the cohort members of the Orchard Project’s 2022 inaugural Adaptation Lab with his adaptation of Emily Guendelsberger’s On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did To Me and How It Drives America Insane. Excerpt from the BroadwayWorld report:
The Orchard Project (www.orchardproject.com) today announced its 2022 Lab programs as well as the names of participating artists and companies. The OP selected 38 projects or artistic teams from a competitive group of 1,417 applicants to participate in this year's programs. This year includes the official launch of a new Orchard Project Adaptation Lab - supporting innovative adaptation works in playwriting, performance art, and transmedia dramatic storytelling - as well as the continuation of the OP's existing labs supporting artists creating new work for theater, audio, and TV. The Orchard Project's Performance Lab will transition back to in-person work in Saratoga Springs, NY, while other labs will be hybrid and split between virtual and workshops in NYC and Los Angeles, allowing the Orchard Project to accelerate the work of innovative playwrights, screenwriters, and theater companies from a breadth of geographic locales while keeping staff and artists safe during the ongoing pandemic.
"The performing arts world has unfortunately lost some of its greatest resources devoted to supporting new artists, project development, and encouraging creative risk taking over the past two years. During this time, the Orchard Project has worked tirelessly to meet our artists' changing needs, and we are proud that - rather than shutting down or scaling back - we have actually increased our programs and are now supporting even more inventive artists and diverse voices. We are excited to embark on a year that mixes in-person residencies with hybrid labs - and we can't wait to see what this wonderful group of artists creates."
2022 ADAPTATION LAB
"This year's inaugural OP Adaptation Lab will focus on performance projects from an aesthetically diverse cohort of artists working in playwriting, technology, and transmedia storytelling. Through their distinct voices, this group of artists expands the definition of adaptation by reinventing, recontextualizing, and cross-pollinating existing source materials, dramatic and beyond. For us, these six projects are united by their rigorous and transgressive artistic interrogations, which are baked into every project on a conceptual level."
- Sam Max and Xiaoyue Zhang, Orchard Project Adaptation Lab Facilitators
JESSE JAE HOON, ON THE CLOCK: Adapted from journalist Emily Guendelsberger's gripping nonfiction account, On the Clock is a nonlinear nightmare that explores the unending mental torture of low-wage work in America.
ADAM KASSIM AND MONA KASRA, DREAMING IN EXILE: is an experimental adaptation of Chekhov's Three Sisters and Strindberg's A Dream Play through the lens of modern-day Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) immigrants, which will incorporate digital and immersive media.
SAM MAYER, poolboy3: the rat wife: poolboy00 is an obscure internet micro, micro celebrity. Ibsen is the father of realism. Both are fame hungry clout chasers with a terrible, explosive secret.
DAN O'BRIEN, BORGES AND ME: A stage adaptation of Jay Parini's acclaimed "novelistic memoir," Borges and Me takes us back fifty years, when Parini finds himself driving the famed Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges on a tour of the Highlands.
LIQING XU, SKINLESS: A re-imagination of the Chinese legend The White Snake as a queer gender-bending fairytale.
GARRETT ZUERCHER, PHILOCTETES: Performed in a hybrid of spoken English and American Sign Language, this adaptation of Sophocles is radically framed through the lens of Deaf culture to provoke dialogue about Disability politics and cultural appropriation.
This inaugural lab will be facilitated by Sam Max and Xiaoyue Zhang.
CHICKEN IS CONDEMNED TO BE FREE will premiere at Alleyway Theatre as part of the 31st Annual Buffalo Quickies
My short play, Chicken is Condemned To Be Free, will premiere at the Alleyway Theatre in Buffalo from February 24 - March 19, 2022 as part of the 31st Annual Buffalo Quickies.
Directed by Chris J Handley
Sets/Lights by Emma Schimminger
Costumes/Props by Todd Warfield
Sound by Jake Nowak
Puppets by Adam Kreutinger