Front Porch Series July 16, 2021

July 16, 2021 at 2:00 p.m.

Join us on ZOOM

Writing Workshop: Using a Historical Moment as a Springboard for Drama – Judy Tate

Four-time EMMY-winning writer, Judy Tate, leads us in an interesting writing workshop that is open to all levels of writers–whether you are a pro, or just starting out. 

“Based on a True Story” is a caption that makes people stop and listen. But how do you begin to think about an historical moment and find the drama in it? How do you decide where to begin your piece and where to end it.? What are the important aspects to keep “true” and which can you embellish or imagine.  Through hands-on activities we will explore using historical documents, stories and more to create characters and imagine where an historical story might begin.

Registration for this workshop is $10/person. Click here to register.

Judy Tate is a playwright, teaching artist and TV writer.  She’s a 4-time daytime Emmy Award, and WGA award winner. A professonal actor for many years, she’s an alumna of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts conservatory program.

Her full-length plays Fast Blood, Slashes of Light and Sex in the Kitchen have been developed/presented/produced by the Civic Ensemble, The Kitchen Theatre, Lark Theatre, EST, Playwrights Horizons, Passage Theatre, Hartford Stage, Epic Theatre Company and Black and Latino Playwrights’ Conference.  Her play In the Parlour was presented in the National Theatre, UK’s suffrage festival called “Courage Everywhere”. 

She’s co-founder and 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 African descended men, women and children slaves, indentured servants and free people who lived in colonial New York and are anonymously buried in the African Burial Ground in Lower Manhattan. 
She also is the Founding Artistic Director of Stargate Theatre Company, a company within Manhattan Theatre Club Education that employs court-involved teenagers to write and perform their own original work for the theatre.  She’s led hundreds of activity-based workshops for a variety of outreach programs: Manhattan Theatre Club, TDF, The American Slavery Project, International Theatre and Literacy Project among others. She specializes in teaching kids at risk and has taught kids in schools, shelters, prisons, townships and from reservations. Her 14 years experience teaching playwriting on Rikers’ Island inspired Lockdown High.