Jessica Kahkoska is a writer, producer, and researcher for theatre and television. She is most interested in work inspired by creative research and historical archive, the American West, and community collaboration.
In theatre, Jessica was recently the Archival Researcher for the Tony-nominated Broadway production/CNN broadcast of Good Night, and Good Luck (written by George Clooney and Grant Heslov), and had 2025 World Premiere Productions: The Vermont Farm Project at Northern Stage Theatre Company (“a rollicking and entertaining musical with pathos — and authentic” — Rutland Herald) and In Her Bones at the Colorado Spring Fine Arts Center (“a bittersweet story told with profound sensitivity and realism… heartwarming and heartbreaking” — Onstage Colorado). She is currently writing new musicals with Ellen Winter (DREAM - under commission by Concord Theatricals/the Alley Theatre) and Katie Lynne Sharbaugh (We Are All Monsters - under commission by Zachary Hausman & Andrew Patino).
As a writer, she has premiered/developed original new plays and musicals in New York and across the country— with New York Stage and Film, Roundabout Theatre Company, Goodspeed Musicals, Weston Theatre Company, and others. Projects include revisionist Western musical The Death of Desert Rose (with Elliah Heifetz, Rhinebeck Writers Retreat, Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellowship), Wild Fire (Commissioned, World Premiere, & Colorado Tour by the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, upcoming at ZSpace), Letters to the President (with Michael Bello/others, Goodspeed Musicals, NY Premiere at the Great Hall at Cooper Union), Agent 355 (with Preston Max Allen, Signature Theatre Company, Chautauqua Theater Company), Wild Home (Notch Theatre Company, NEA “ArtWorks” Grant), and Nia (World Premiere: UNC Chapel Hill).
Theatre
As a dramaturg, she has supported the development of new works Off-Broadway (safeword by S. Asher Gelman, We are the Tigers by Preston Max Allen), in NYC (Judgement Day by Rob Ulin, Salaam Medina by Rona Siddiqui/Playwrights Horizons, ThreeTimesFast by Teresa Lotz and Naomi Matlow, Salem by Kira Stone), and regionally at Creede Rep, the Athena Project, Arts Mission, and others.
Dramaturgy
Documentary
In the documentary space, Jessica has worked as a writer, producer, and researcher on films and series for the Discovery Channel (American Spirit (seasons 1-2), True Crime and Shine (seasons 1-3)), CNN Originals (Vegas: The Story of Sin City), Max Originals (They Called Him Mostly Harmless), the Oxygen Network (Sins of the South (seasons 1-2), New York Homicide), Universal Music Group, Time Studios, the Magnolia Network, the History Channel, and Peacock. She is currently an Associate Producer for a historical crime series on the Discovery Channel, and is developing original documentary projects with Muck Media, XTR Productions, and Fifth Season.
Scripted
In scripted TV, she has staffed on original series for Shondaland and Netflix, and was both a researcher and writer on the scripted podcast Madam Ram (starring Toni Collette, created by Michelle Rosenfarb, produced by QCODE, LuckyChap Entertainment, and Elizabeth Cantillon). She is the 2023 recipient of the National Archive Foundation's Cokie Roberts Fellowship in Women's History for her research on the American women who worked at the Nuremberg Trials. She is currently developing original scripted projects with AGC Studios, Lighthouse Pictures, Happy Accidents, and Billy Magnussen's HappyBad Bungalow.
Awards, Residencies, and Teaching
Jessica is the two-time recipient of the Marion International Fellowship in the Visual and Performing Arts (2017 and 2023), and has received a Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellowship, the Marscio Visiting Scholarship at Denver University, and a Redline Contemporary Arts Center “Arts-in-Society” Grant. She has been an artist in residence at Rhinebeck Writers Retreat (New York) Faberllull Olot (Spain), UCROSS Foundation (Wyoming), Green Box Arts (Colorado), the Johnny Mercer Grove at Goodspeed (Connecticut), the Chautauqua Institution (New York), and was awarded the inaugural “Powered By Off-Center” creative residency at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. For her research on the American women who worked at the Nuremberg Trials, Jessica is the 2023 recipient of the National Archive Foundation's Cokie Roberts Fellowship in Women's History
She is a guest lecturer at Wesleyan University (Producing and Performing Anthropology with Dr. A. George Bajalia) and on faculty at Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts (Theatre Histories, Advanced Dramatic Structure and Text Analysis).
BA: Northwestern University. MBA: SUNY New Paltz
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