FISH MEAT is a funny, heartbreaking, hopeful story spanning oceans and centuries while remaining intimate and character-focused.

Ng’s deftly weaves together two timelines, inhabiting two seemingly different worlds with humor and familiarity, her potent dialogue by turns colloquial and poetic. Her two protagonists—one a plucky teen girl from a nineteenth century fishing village, the other a queer marine biologist and transracial adoptee—echo and reflect each other until their paths unexpectedly collide. FISH MEAT asks uncomfortable questions about consent, fetishization and agency, all while maintaining a sense of humor and moments of tender humanity. Must-read!

Premiere Stages, the professional Equity theatre company in residence at Kean University, is pleased to recognize FISH MEAT by Esme Ng as a Semi-Finalist for the 2024 Premiere Play Festival. FISH MEAT rose through a competitive selection process conducted by Premiere staff and a panel of outside theatre professionals to become one of 48 Semi-Finalists out of 760 submissions. The panel was particularly impressed by how the play explores important personal and cultural upheavals with sensitivity, and how the scenes are endearing, well-crafted and have a seeming ease to their unfolding. Our congratulations and thanks to Esme.

A beautiful, painful story of two women from different time periods struggling to find their place in the world and not knowing who they can trust. I'm blown away by how Esme brought their two worlds together. It's not easy do accomplish what they have, and I was intrigued and invested the whole time. Love the poetry and marine biology. I fully support becoming a fish to survive climate crisis.