JESSICA WU is a New York City based writer, director, and song-writer who began her professional theatre career over a decade ago as a dancer/singer/actor/musician/whatever-you-want-me-to-do-if-it-pays-the-bills. As the latter, she has performed on Broadway, Off-Broadway, Off-Off Broadway, in a half-dozen National Tours, regionally, on television, on YouTube, and "For free because you're my friend, but I swear this is the last time".

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Select credits include the Broadway Revivals of Miss Saigon and A Chorus Line, Shakespeare in the Park, The Radio City Spring Spectacular, Lincoln Center, BAM, Signature Theatre, The Kennedy Center, Paper Mill Playhouse, Goodspeed Musicals, the National Tours of Doctor Dolittle, The King And I, Wizard of Oz, Miss Saigon, and A Chorus Line, as well as on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.

 

She has written a number of short-films, full-length musicals, and theatrical works. “You, Me, I, We” has won several development awards (including The National Asian Artists Project’s Discover: New Musicals Series), was a Finalist for Live & In Color’s Development Retreat, a Semi-Finalist for The National Alliance of Musical Theatre’s O’Neill Conference, and most recently honored as a Semi-Finalist for the 2022 Relentless Musical Award by the American Playwriting Foundation. "Good Mourning" was recipient of the 2021 Moxie Commission and a finalist for the 2022 American Blue Ink Award.

 

Jessica is the lyricist for the new musical "Hello Kitty Must Die", based upon the cult-novel by Angela S. Choi, which recently made its world-premiere at the 2023 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Upcoming is “Poupelle of Chimney Town”, a new-musical based upon the best-selling Japanese picture book of the same name. It debuted Internationally in Tokyo, Japan Fall 2021 and is slated for the 2023-2024 season in NYC.

 

She is a member of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Writing Workshop and is Artistic Producer at Brooklyn Children's Theatre, a non-profit theatre program dedicated to creating equitable musicals for young performers. Jessica has served as an adjunct Theatre Professor at American University, as a mentor with the Harvard-Radcliffe G&S Players, and she spent several years in Non-Profit Arts Leadership as an off-Broadway Associate Artistic Director. In 2019 founded Inspirate Creative Consulting and Development, a practice dedicated to providing clients with purposeful creative coaching and open-hearted, collaborative development sessions for works in-process.

 

​Jessica lives in East Harlem with her husband Ian, and their very fluffy rescue dog Howie.