Judith Sloan

Judith Sloan is an actor, audio artist, writer, radio producer, human rights activist, educator and poet whose work combines humor, pathos and a love of the absurd. For over twenty years, Sloan has been producing and presenting interdisciplinary works in audio and theater, portraying voices often ignored by the mass media.  Her solo performances and plays include: Denial of the Fittest (nominated for best comedy performance at the Edinburgh International Fringe Festival), Responding to Chaos, A Tattle Tale: eyewitness in Mississippi, and Crossing the BLVD: strangers, neighbors, aliens in a new America, and YO MISS! which was developed with dramaturg Morgan Jenness and director Matt Gould. Her commentaries, plays, poetry and documentaries have aired on National Public Radio, New York Public Radio, WBEZ Chicago, PRI, BBC, and listener sponsored stations throughout the U.S. Sloan has received awards for her audio mixes, radio documentaries and work with various musicians integrating storytelling, acting, sampling and multiple languages into symphonic pieces, live performance with actors and musicians, and radio. Sloan was commissioned to write the libretto for 1001 Voices: A Symphony for a New America, with music by Frank London and animations by Warren Lehrer, which premiered in April 2012 by the Queens Symphony Orchestra and will be performed in December 2017 in collaboration with the Queens Choral Society and the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College. Her multi-layered theater work has been produced in theatres and festivals throughout the U.S. and abroad including: LaMama E.T.C, The Public Theatre, The Theatre Workshop (Edinburgh, Scotland), The Smithsonian Institution, the Market Theatre (Johannesburg, SA), etc. Sloan received a 2013-2014 New York Foundation on the Arts (NYFA) fellowship in Music and Sound, an individual artist grant from Queens Council on the Arts to begin development on a new piece using a combination of music, sound and voice called, Anecdotal Evidence. Sloan was 2011 Finalist, in Missouri Review National Audio Competition in self-recorded documentary category for “Tongues Twisting”; 2009 First Place Missouri Review National Audio Competition and First Runner-Up; 2008 First Place, Missouri Review National Audio Competition; 2005 BAXten Artist In Progress Award with Carl Hancock Rux in the Artist category; 2005 Short Doc Competition from the Third Coast International Audio Festival; 2005 Special Merit Award from the National Federation of Community Broadcasters; 2004 Best of Indie Culture Award for her mix of Globalization on the Crossing the BLVD CD; Along with Warren Lehrer she co-wrote the Crossing the BLVD book (W.W. Norton) and received numerous awards for the entire multi-media project including the 2004 Brendan Gill Prize from the Municipal Art Society of New York, the 2003 Innovative Use of Archives Award, a Media That Matters Award; grants from Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Franklin Furnace, New York State Council on the Arts among others. Collaborators in theatre, audio, books, music and exhibitions include: Frank London, Joanna Settle, Laura Sydell, Terry Park, Robert Winn, Scott Johnson, Gogol Bordello, David Krakauer, Elise Knudson, Deep Singh, Chesney Snow, among others. Her articles and editorials have been published in the New York Times, the Forward, Movement Research Journal and Altnet.com. Sloan has produced and co-produced several documentaries (video and audio) including: Reclaiming A Past about her work with older European Jews and Holocaust survivors; a documentary featuring excerpts from the play A Tattle Tale: eyewitness in Mississippi was broadcast on National Public Radio. She is a member of the faculty at Gallatin School of Individualized Study at NYU and a member of the Dramatist Guild and the Network of Ensemble Theatres. Sloan has been a guest performer and lecturer at Dartmouth College, Columbia University, Yale University, SUNY Purchase, University of Hawaii, University of Massachusetts, among others. She is the director of EarSay Youth Voices: Cross-Cultural Dialogue Through the Arts, an arts mentorship and training program creating collaborations between disparate communities that grew out of EarSay’s Crossing the BLVD project. Sloan has been working with immigrant and refugee teenagers, many who come from war-zones, since 2001. Her work at the International High School at LaGuardia Community College in Queens garnered her the Partnership in Education Award in June 2009 for providing music, theatre, and writing workshops to teenagers from war-zones and immigrant youth who have been displaced by natural disasters and poverty. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Theatre Week, The London Stage, San Francisco Chronicle, among others.