Judy Tate

Judy Tate is a playwright, teaching artist and television writer. She has won 4 Emmys and a WGA award. A professonal actor for many years, she is an alumna of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts conservatory program.  She is Producing Artistic Director of The American Slavery Project (ASP),  a theatrical response to revisionism in American discourse around enslavement and its aftermath. She conceived and produced ASP's first original work Unheard Voices, a collectively written monologue piece with music which brings to life the enslaved African descended men, women and children who lived in colonial New York and are buried in the African Burial Ground in Lower Manhattan. Since its inception ASP has produced work annually and was one of the first companies to turn to Enhanced Audio Drama when the pandemic darkened theatres across the country. ASP's Audio drama, "Black Women and the Ballot", three short plays about rebellions large and small that Black women have mounted to progress voting rights has been viewed over 5K times on American Slavery Project's YouTube channel. She is Founding Artistic Director of Stargate Theatre, which employs justice-involved teenagers to write and perform their own original work for the stage.  She has led hundreds of activity-based workshops for a variety of outreach programs. She has taught young people in schools, shelters, prisons, townships and from reservations. Her 14 years experience teaching playwriting on Rikers Island inspired her pilot, Lockdown High. Her plays have been developed/presented/produced around the country and in the U.K.

What drew you to the M.A. in Arts Politics?

The urge to deepen my work and explore the theoretical underpinnings.

What are you doing now?
Judy Tate has been a staff writer for "Beyond the Gates" on CBS/Paramount+ and co-produced by the NAACP. The groundbreaking daytime drama centers around a family of Black professionals and their wider circle.

This winter Judy's play "The Language of Sight" was produced at Lafayette College. It is the story of David McDonogh who was the first Black Ophthalmologist in the U.S, who became so while he was still enslaved. The play is expected to move into a NYC theatre in 2026.

Judy was awarded the Sloan Foundation Grant to write a play about Charles Drew, a Black doctor who invented the process for separating blood from plasma and pioneered transfusions. Judy has also co-written with Melissa Murray-Mutch a scholarly article for a Routledge book: Applied Theatre: Theatre and Racial Justice. The article's title is, "Spiritual Alchemy: American Slavery Project Performance and Education" and there will be a book launch this year.