ALEX HIGGIN-HOUSER
LIBRETTIST
BIOGRAPHY
Alex Higgin-Houser is a lyricist, playwright, and theatre educator. As founding artistic director of Underscore Theatre, Alex developed new musicals in Chicago from 2011 to 2018, where he also co-founded the Chicago Musical Theatre festival. His piece Haymarket (mus: David Kornfeld) won Chicago’s 2019 Joseph Jefferson award for best new musical, and is being workshopped in 2026 at Oberlin College. In 2019, Alex assisted composer William Finn as he completed his final song cycle. Alex’s piece Discovery (mus: Dan Gibson) is under development with Drama Club Productions. His musical Adventurers (mus: Lucy O’Brien), a first-of-its-kind DnD musical wherein dice rolls influence the story, was workshopped in 2024 at Whitman College. Alex has worked with students at Oberlin, Whitman, Elon, NYU Tisch, and Carleton College. He resides in Ohio with his partner Dr. Francesca Chubb-Confer and their son August.
REPRESENTATIVES
CRITICAL ACCLAIM
"Kornfield and Higgin-Houser...trust their audiences..." – Chicago Sun Times
Haymarket – "One of the sneakiest strengths of 'Haymarket,' a new folk musical from composer David Kornfeld and writer Alex Higgin-Houser, is that it knows to keep current events out of it. While the play contains numerous parallels to the nation’s current political strife, it makes sure the two lines never converge. The parallels stay parallel...Kornfield and Higgin-Houser...trust their audiences to figure it out."
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"...a skillfully shaped book and lyrics by Alex Higgen-Houser..." – Chicago Sun Times
Haymarket – "With a skillfully shaped book and lyrics by Alex Higgen-Houser, and soaring music by David Kornfeld that captures a sense of the story’s 19th century American roots, but is fused with just enough of a modern beat, this bold, ambitious, eerily timely and fervently performed show chronicles how the mass labor demonstration held at Chicago’s Haymarket Square (at Desplaines and Randolph Streets) on May 4, 1886 was undermined by a bombing and subsequent gunfire."
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“….very intelligent lyrics..." – WDCB The Dueling Critics
Haymarket – “It's really a rich and wonderful musical….[with] very intelligent lyrics.”