This play truly took my breath away. It has a slow burn pace that gently pulled me into the world of its characters. And, as the play opens up, spanning time and space and imagistic vocabularies -- while consistently asking difficult questions about privacy, ownership, and preservation as it pertains to language and culture -- it concludes with a final scene that really snuck up on me and delivered one of the most emotional experiences I've had at a play reading. Gorgeous and heartbreaking.

Premiere Stages, the professional Equity theatre company in residence at Kean University, is pleased to recognize The Words of Ants as a Semi-Finalist in the 2025 Premiere Play Festival. The Words of Ants rose through a competitive process conducted by Premiere staff and an external panel of professionals to become distinguished among 805 submissions. The panel was impressed by how the play's drama is simultaneously straightforward yet mysterious. Our congratulations and thanks to Xiaoyan.

A meditation on where the sacredness of tradition collides with the insidiousness of commodification. Kang bravely faces the looming monster that is extinction of a culture with beautiful lyrical language and complex characters with a lot at stake, especially those looking to escape their impoverish circumstances. The last line is haunting, and has stayed with me for days. Read and produce with play so you may also be moved by this theatrical reflection.