What people in the community say:
What the critics say:
It can happen here.
THEATER PROJECTS
For over twenty years, Judith Sloan has been creating and performing in multi-media theatrical works as both a solo artist and in collaboration with musicians, dancers, singers, visual artists, and actors.
IT CAN HAPPEN HERE work-in-progress
For nine months playwright/actor and longtime chronicler of Queens, (Crossing the BLVD, 1001 Voices: Symphony for a New America), Judith Sloan talked with residents of Southeastern Queens about our hopes, fears, and aspirations. "What struck me over and over were stories of love and support that often fly under the radar in times of extreme duress. I decided to zoom in on conversations between women. Like the novel It Can't Happen Here, my play is inspired by real events." In It Can Happen Here, two hairdressers—one black, one white — in an ever-changing neighborhood in Queens, embark on a new dream. They follow their passion for singing and nurturing a community in the midst of a national political climate of chaos, division and autocracy. Through their journey they reveal stories of their customers, family members and neighbors, including a DACA recipient, an immigration lawyer, and an older man who lost everything in Hurricane Sandy. Sloan was awarded a grant in 2018 to begin development of this work from the Queens Council on the Arts, Artist Commissioning Program. The first version of this work was performed at the Jamaica Performing Arts Center and later a revised presentation at the Queens Theater in March 2020 before the Covid Pandemic shut down live theater. Sloan is currently rebooting this work, with the most recent excerpt performed at the Peoples’s Voice Cafe on November 19, 2022.
YO MISS!
Filler text
Filler text
Filler textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller text
Filler textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller text
Filler textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller text
Filler textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller text
Fusing the art of theatre, poetry, and music, YO MISS! is a sometimes funny, sometimes sad, always truth-telling show about immigrant/refugee teenagers and incarcerated youth grappling with the cataclysmic events that shaped them. Using midi-controllers and an original musical score to accompany her compelling performance, Judith Sloan remixes her own traumatic experiences with those of her students and transforms into a multitude of characters ages 14 to 80.
Written and Performed by Judith Sloan
Direction: Matt Gould
Dramaturgy: Morgan Jenness
Performed solo or with live musicians.
“This deeply felt and richly entertaining show frames its earthy soulfulness in high-concept theater with ease. In a whizzing-by hour Sloan plays an assortment of students of many nationalities, immigrant teenagers and incarcerated youth with the simplest of adjustments–a headscarf, an accent–then fortifies the scene with crowds of recorded characters whose voices she mixes live onstage, operating several MIDI controllers with her fingers and feet. As artfully composed and intelligently framed as it is emotionally gutsy…It is a fully realized piece of inventive theater that packs a punch – and a lesson.” -BlogCritics Jon Sobel
Filler textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller text
Crossing the BLVD: strangers, neighbors, aliens in a new America
As immigration policy is hotly debated around the country in terms of national and cultural security, Crossing the BLVD: strangers, neighbors, aliens in a new America presents the human stories of why immigrants and refugees have migrated to the US and what their experiences have been since they came here pre- and post-9/11. Based on Lehrer and Sloan’s critically acclaimed book, actor/writer Judith Sloan channels many of the people that the couple interviewed on their three-year journey around the world through the borough of Queens, New York. The performance is illuminated by projections of Lehrer’s stunning photographs along with an original soundtrack of music and sounds, including Sloan’s audio mixes, music by Scott Johnson and Gogol Bordello. Home to the New York airports, Queens, is no longer made up of neatly partitioned ethnic enclaves. Today the choreography of Queens, a place where residents speak 138 different languages, is one of chaotic co-existence. This group portrait of a multi-ethnic, multi-racial community is a magnifying glass for the future of America. Above all, Crossing the BLVD is a celebration of resilient, prismatic character – in search of home.
Winner 2004 Brendan Gill Prize Municipal Art Society of NY
Crossing the BLVD: strangers, neighbors, aliens in a new America
Written by Warren Lehrer and Judith Sloan
Performed by Judith Sloan
Photography and design by Warren Lehrer
To inquire about a performance CLICK HERE
BUY THE BOOK ON AMAZON