Hansol Jung News

The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center announced today the 2020 summer season which will be held entirely online due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

PROFILE THEATRE premieres Claudia, A Viral Love Story, a 5-episode audio play by 9 astounding writers, known for their work in theatre, film and TV. Each writer was given prompts to create a scene and was asked to hand over their scene to the next writer to build on.

PLAY AT HOME, the new micro-commissioning initiative begun by Baltimore Center Stage, Long Wharf Theatre, The Public Theater, The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, has announced their 100th playwright commission, ensuring that $50,000 has gone directly to playwrights in need in this time of crisis.

A play discussion group focused on contemporary female voices and a weekly Q&A with the artists of SpeakEasy's 30th Anniversary Season are the two new audience engagement initiatives set to debut at SpeakEasy Stage next week.  

Need something new to listen to, read, or watch? Check out this week's list of new and upcoming releases, including a Jagged Little Pill book, Rags and Cambodian Rock Band cast recordings, Sea Wall/A Life audiobook, and more!

The William & Eva Fox Foundation and Theatre Communications Group have announced the fourteenth round of Fox Foundation Resident Actor Fellowships recipients.

Two dozen nominations of outstanding actors, directors, designers and ensembles were announced today by The Boston Theater Critics Association (BTCA) for the 38th Annual Elliot Norton Awards.

Baltimore Center Stage, Long Wharf Theatre, The Public Theater, The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, have announced PLAY AT HOME, a series of micro-commissioned short plays. The first of the commissioned plays will be available today, Wednesday, April 1, for the public to download, read and perform at home.

The 24 Hour Plays has released its first-ever series of Viral Monologues on IGTV!

Tonight, The 24 Hour Plays releases its first-ever series of Viral Monologues on IGTV @24hourplays and at https://24hourplays.com/viral-monologues/. 20 of the theatre world's top writers have been paired with 20 game actors and have written unique pieces just for them. From 6 PM until midnight, the new monologues will be published, one every 15 minutes.

Due to COVID-19 precautions, Soho Rep has announced a postponement of the New York premiere production of Hansol Jung's Wolf Play.

On Monday, March 2, at 6 p.m. Asolo Repertory Theatre welcomes audiences to its new 'black box'-style theatre for The German Party, the inaugural production of the new Asolo Rep Ground Floor Series. The one-performance-only events will feature diverse dramatic, movement and musical pieces in an intimate and versatile new performance space located within the FSU Center for the Performing Arts.

Soho Rep., in association with Ma-Yi Theater Company, will present Hansol Jung's mischievous and affecting new work, Wolf Play, directed by Dustin Wills, March 17-April 19. When a young South Korean boy-represented onstage as a puppet operated by a 'wolf'-is 're-homed' via a website chat room, he and his brand-new parents (a professional boxer, Ash, and Ash's wife, Robin) undergo the strange, fraught process of becoming a family.

For a long time within their history, Company One has cornered the market in Boston for selecting those cutting-edge new works that are able to effectively spark conversations and juxtaposing them against each other in ways that are both productive and incendiary. Hats off to Director of New Work, Ilana M Brownstein, as well as National New Play Network (NNPN) Producer in Residence, Jasmine Brooks, and the entire administrative staff for selecting, through NNPN, such a well-crafted text for a rolling premiere. Jung, who may be best known in Boston for her equally nuanced play, Cardboard Piano, does not stoop to begin with a message, as seems to be in vogue for playwrights right now. She does not set out to teach us anything in a certain, straightforward lecture subdivided into all-too-interchangeable dialogue. Instead, the genesis of her play seems to center around the hypothetical. As one character explains in a moment of meta-theatricality, the evening is nothing more than a series of 'what if?'s. What if a young boy was adopted from Korea by a a?oenot-future-orienteda?? white couple who have given up on having any biological children of their own? What if, once that couple is able to conceive, the boy is again put up for adoption? What if he is adopted by a lesbian couple, and his adoptive father is not entirely thrilled with the prospect of two women raising a boy? By asking these questions and not providing answers, Jung has effectively done what so many playwrights and their commissioners claim to want. She has created a work with the potential to generate conversations that lead to growth and change. Set against the thorough dramaturgical work one can expect from Company One, the production introduces issues within the idea of transracial adoption, America's systems for adoption, and the thin line between a?oevulnerability and violencea??.

After hearing from educators and district leaders about their struggle to engage high school students in classic literature, the Alliance Theatre is pleased to announce a new playwriting initiative. The Classic Remix Project will commission leading American playwrights to create new works that revitalize, rethink, and respond to classic literary works found in most school curriculums. 

National New Play Network, the country's alliance of nonprofit theaters that collaborate in innovative ways to develop, produce, and extend the life of new plays, announces the continuation of its Rolling World Premiere (RWP) of Wolf Play by Hansol Jung. The play was commissioned by Artists Rep and began its Roll there last year. Company One Theatre (January 20 - February 29, 2020) continues the RWP through February 29.

NAATCO (National Asian American Theatre Company) founder and Artistic Producing Director Mia Katigbak today announced the creation of The NAATCO National Partnership Project (NNPP), a national theater initiative that will ingrain the inclusion of Asian American theatre artists, technicians, administrators, and community members in the American theater.

The Gift Theatre will present TEN 2020, the company's annual season kick-off festival of ten world premiere ten-minute pieces by The Gift and guest artists, curated by Artistic Director Michael Patrick Thornton and Associate Artistic Directors Paul D'Addario and Emjoy Gavino. TEN will play January 9 - 18, 2020 at 4802 N. Milwaukee Ave. in Chicago's Jefferson Park neighborhood. Tickets for TEN are free for Gift subscribers and $10 for the general public. Tickets are currently available at thegifttheatre.org or by calling the Gift's box office at 773-283-7071.

Theatre Royal Bath Productions today announces three new premieres to open at the Ustinov Studio including Hansol Jung's Wild Goose Dreams which premieres next month (21 November to 21 December) with opening night for press on 27 November, Will Eno's Drama Desk Award winning play The Realistic Joneses (6 February to 7 March), followed by the latest drama from emerging playwright Kate Attwell, Testmatch (2 April to 9 May 2020), in a co-production with English Touring Theatre.

Soho Rep. kicks off its 2019-20 season with the U.S. Premiere of Zawe Ashton's for all the women who thought they were Mad. Directed by Whitney White (What to Send Up When It Goes Down), Ashton's play is a feverish inquiry and exposé. In it, multigenerational African diasporic voices gather around a woman, Joy. With Ashton's trenchant, irreverent, and lyrical writing, Soho Rep. continues its tradition of presenting works by playwrights whose experimentation with language, social commentary, and piercing wit turn the theater into a space that brims with possibility and danger.