Judy Tate

Judy Tate

Judy Tate is a four-time Emmy award-winning writer, a 25+ year member of Ensemble Studio Theatre, the co-founder and Producing Artistic Director of The American Slavery Project, and Founding Artistic Director of Stargate Theatre Company, a project of the Manhattan Theatre Club which employs court-involved youth to write and perform original plays. Judy’s own plays, productions, and/or workshops include Fast...
Judy Tate is a four-time Emmy award-winning writer, a 25+ year member of Ensemble Studio Theatre, the co-founder and Producing Artistic Director of The American Slavery Project, and Founding Artistic Director of Stargate Theatre Company, a project of the Manhattan Theatre Club which employs court-involved youth to write and perform original plays. Judy’s own plays, productions, and/or workshops include Fast Blood, EST, Passage Theatre, Hartford Stage, The Lark, Epic Theatre Ensemble; Slashes of Light, world premiere at The Kitchen Theatre co-produced by the Civic Ensemble; Sex in the Kitchen, EST Octoberfest 2010, CAP21 2011-12), The Point and Mistaken for Genius (both at The Women’s Project) and others. Awards include the Manhattan Theatre Club playwriting fellowship; the New Professional Theatre Playwriting Award; and the Women in Arts and Media Collaboration Award (honored finalist) four Emmy awards and A Writers Guild Award. Her television writing includes Another World, Days of Our Lives, and As the World Turns. A professional actor for many years, Judy has worked in theatres throughout the United States and in Southern Africa. As a teaching artist, she has worked with playwriting students in alternative schools, prisons, shelters, from reservations and townships both independently and with Manhattan Theatre Club, Theatre Development Fund, and the International Theatre and Literacy Project. She is an alumna of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts conservatory program where she studied with Stella Adler and was an honors graduate receiving the Founder's Day Award, Seidman Award, and Beinecke Award for excellence in acting and academia.

Plays

  • In the Parlour
    March 1st 1913, on the eve of what was to become the most historic Womens’ Suffrage march in history,
    the African American activist Mary Church Terrell negotiates with white suffragette, Alice Paul, who has organized the march, but is unwilling to allow African-American women to participate. The play takes place in the parlour of the home of Edna Brown, a Howard University scholar and sorority sister...
    March 1st 1913, on the eve of what was to become the most historic Womens’ Suffrage march in history,
    the African American activist Mary Church Terrell negotiates with white suffragette, Alice Paul, who has organized the march, but is unwilling to allow African-American women to participate. The play takes place in the parlour of the home of Edna Brown, a Howard University scholar and sorority sister of Delta Sigma Theta who is making walking skirts for the event. The famous educator Nellie Quander, leader of a rival sorority has arranged this meeting between the two formidable opponents and as they do battle, we witness history being made.
  • Mistaken for Genius
    In this hilariously stinging 10-minute play, an Ethnic non-specific interviewer at the Southside Performing Arts Mecca delights in introducing us to the famous Three-Name-Playwright whose exposed left breast along with her Sniveling Sycophant gives her inspiration. But is there a the story?
  • Disunion
    Dr. Turner is a successful CEO of a non-profit foundation that helps inner-city children and he's about to announce a run for State Senate. When his most trusted employee, Lucia, shows up with a plan to unionize the office workers, the party takes an unexpected turn.
  • Second Sight
    After twelve years of separation Mavis Baxter decides to visit her brother George in his store-front psychic shop and pay him for a tarot card "reading". What starts as an act of contrition turns into something deeper and more terrifying. Ghosts aren't just the ones that show up in the crystal ball.
  • Slashes of Light
    1967. In an all-black parochial middle school on Chicago's south side, precocious young Sunny befriends the new white history teacher, but her best friend, a budding young radical, doesn't approve, and the older boy she has a crush on, is mysteriously quiet. In this coming-of-age story, the characters confront their deepest secrets in a thorny struggle to understand themselves, each other and the...
    1967. In an all-black parochial middle school on Chicago's south side, precocious young Sunny befriends the new white history teacher, but her best friend, a budding young radical, doesn't approve, and the older boy she has a crush on, is mysteriously quiet. In this coming-of-age story, the characters confront their deepest secrets in a thorny struggle to understand themselves, each other and the changing world around them. In this play, one male actor plays the "Conductor" which is 5 different characters and the action swings between 1940's England and 1960's Chicago. There are parts of 5 actors all together.
  • Fast Blood
    1845, Kentucky, a black couple, Ham and Effie who live by themselves on Schuyler's tobacco plantation, stumble across the body of a lynched man who is still alive. When they cut him down their connection with this mysterious stranger thrusts them into a world of danger and forces them to reckon with their pasts, survive their present and fight for their uncertain futures.