Honoring legacies of dramatic form while extending them into new, disorienting spaces, playwright Hansol Jung imbues her inventive writing for the stage with lyrical, percussive, discordant, soaring musical language. A cornerstone of her storytelling, Jung’s perspective as a queer woman and immigrant - born in South Korea, raised primarily in South Africa - lends her narratives a profoundly moving authenticity and depth. New York bound in her ‘twenties, Jung knows deep in her bones about an outsider’s dislocation. Through stories about immigration, child soldiers, and star-crossed lovers, throughout her ebullient, emotionally charged plays her characters experience loneliness, isolation and longing, loss, cultural displacement, and struggle for a sense of connection and tenderness. In her most recent works, turning towards stories of erotic desire and communal catharsis, even farce, one encounters abundant wit whether in plot, dialogue, pace, or the inclusion of a seven-actor chorus or a main character played by a puppet. Within the darkness, Jung sees both the tragedy and the comedy of collective trauma. Or as one journalist asked about a love story that includes suicide and gunshots, “How do you write a funny play about North Korea?” She has.

photo by Beowulf Sheehan