Judith Sloan

Artist Information

Biography

Judith Sloan is an actress, spoken-word artist, oral historian, writer, radio producer and audio artist whose work combines humor, pathos and a love of the absurd. Her audio works and poetic commentaries have aired on public radio stations nationwide. Her poem Sweeping Statements, about teaching boys in jails and alternative schools, won first place in the Missouri Review National Audio Competition. Along with Warren Lehrer she is co-artistic director of EarSay, a non-profit organization dedicated to presenting interdisciplinary works on voices often ignored by the mass media. Her commentaries, plays, poetry and documentaries have aired on National Public Radio, New York Public Radio, WBEZ Chicago, and listener sponsored stations throughout the U.S. Her 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 (Scotland), The Smithsonian Institution, the Knitting Factory, the Jewish Museum (NY) etc. She has received grants from Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Franklin Furnace, New York State Council on the Arts, the Sparkplug Foundation, Queens Council on the Arts, among others. Collaborators in theatre, audio, books, exhibitions include Frank London, Warren Lehrer, Elise Knudson, Teresa Kochis, Michael Dinwiddie, Laura Sydell, David Krakauer, Immortal Technique, and Gogol Bordello. Her solo performances include: Crossing the BLVD, Denial of the Fittest, (nominated for best comedy performance at the Edinburgh International Fringe Festival) Responding to Chaos, Peace is Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Kill and A Tattle Tale: eyewitness in Mississippi and Yo Miss! Teaching Inside the Cultural Divide, Vol. 1. Her articles and editorials have been published in the New York Times, the Forward, Movement Research Journal. 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, broadcast on National Public Radio. She has appeared on Comedy Central and PBS and is is a member of the faculty at Gallatin School of Individualized Study at NYU where she teaches Character Acting, Theatre, Oral History, Interdisciplinary Arts, and advises students on projects that cross the boundaries between artist and scholar. 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. Sloan has been a guest performer and lecturer at Dartmouth College, Columbia University, SUNY Purchase, University of Hawaii, University of Massachusetts, etc. She conducts workshops for teachers on immigration and diversity, in using theatre arts with young people, (in the classroom and on stage) and performs and teaches from time to time in New York City schools, youth correctional facilities and jails. She is the director of Cross-Cultural Dialogue Through the Arts , an arts mentorhsip and training program creating collaborations between disparate communities. She is currently consulting with several organizations including Facing History and Ourselves and the American Academy of Physician Assistants to train teachers and caregivers about interviewing refugees and people at risk. She lives in Queens with her husband Warren and 150 characters.

Performances include:

What happens when a teaching artist survives a near-fatal car accident and collides with the oncoming traffic of Hip Hop culture?

In Yo Miss! Teaching Inside the Cultural Divide, Vol. 1 Judith Sloan remixes stories from thirteen years of teaching immigrant/refugee teenagers and incarcerated youth as they grapple with the cataclysmic global events that shaped them. Through poetry, vivid character portrayals and music, Sloan brings their tales to life along with her own stories revealing the ripple effects of the Holocaust on her family. Using poetry, music, and character portrayals, she finds resilience in the face of tragedy.

Conceived, written, & performed by Judith Sloan
Directed by Michael Dinwiddie
Music Director Frank London
Assistant Director Daniel Seth

Live Trumpet: Sonny Singh
Bass: Michael Williams
Live sound engineer: Luke Santy

Dramaturgy Warren Lehrer, Yoni Oppenheim, Editha Rosario
Yo Miss! Design by Warren Lehrer

Includes music & sound by Dave Guy, Touré “Southpaw” Harris, Guy Klucevsek, David Krakauer, Frank London, Taylor Rivelli, Judith Sloan, David Stevens, Immortal Technique, Ken White.

Sloan's solo performance breaks down assumptions that often divide seemingly conflicting worlds. Performed live with drummer/percussionist Ken White, and a live band when possible including Frank London and Sonny Singh.
Directed by Michael Dinwiddie.

Crossing the BLVD: strangers, neighbors, aliens in a new America, a multi-media performance focusing on stories of new immigrants and refugees in the most polyglot place on the planet- Queens, NY.

Crossing the BLVD is a whirlwind tour and love poem of what has often been called the most racially and ethnically diverse county in America. In the tradition of the playwright Anna Deavere Smith, Ms. Sloan regularly performs "Crossing the BLVD" at schools, museums and community events, adopting the personae (and respectfully mimicking the accents) of the varied immigrants whose stories are in the book...
The New York Times, City Room Blog

[Crossing the BLVD is] a remarkably beautiful, lovingly put together example of bottom-up journalism.
Amy Goodman, Anchor and Executive Producer Democracy Now!

Awards:

First Place, 2009 Missouri Review National Audio Competition for Dayenu with music by Frank London. First Runner Up 2009, for What's Your Status with music by Taylor Rivelli.
First Place, 2008 Missouri Review National Audio Competition, Narrative Essay for Sweeping Statements with music by Taylor Rivelli.
2005 BAXten Artist Award
2005 Short Doc Competition, Third Coast International Audio Festival
2005 Special Merit Award for Cargo Flight to Somewhere
2004 Brendan Gill Prize, Municipal Arts Society for Crossing the BLVD
2003 Innovative Use of Archives Award from Archivists Roundtable of New York

Sloan has toured Colleges and Universities and Theatres:
New York University
Columbia University
Riverside College, Riverside California
University of Maine
University of Tennessee
University of Memphis
Duke University
Yale University
SUNY, Oswego, Purchase, Plattsburg, Albany
UC Berkeley, California
Dartmouth College, New Hampshire
Market Theatre, Johannesburg, South Africa
Theatre Workshop, Edinburgh Scotland
The Public Theatre, New York City
The Phoenix Theatre, Indianapolis, IN
Bryant University
Simmons College
Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore
Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center

Instrumentation

Frank London - Lead Trumpet

Discography

Sweeping Statements, (single 2008) won Missouri Review National Audio Competition, Narrative Essay category. Also streaming on WBEZ, Chicago Public Radio's Third Coast International Audio Festival website along with What's Your Status (single 2008), Won First Runner Up, Missouri Review National Audio Competition, 2009

2009: Dayenu with Frank London
2008: Sweeping Statements, What's Your Status with Taylor Rivelli
2005: Tongues Twisting
2003: Crossing the BLVD: strangers, neighbors, aliens in a new America
2001-2002: Radio documentaries, Crossing the BLVD
1996-2002: Public Radio documentaries and commentaries.

Links

• Facebook
• EarSay
• Crossing the BLVD

Audio

• Sweeping Statements
  Listen  
• What's Your Status
  Listen  
• Sweeping Statements (clean)
  Listen  
• Dayenu
  Listen  
• Judith Sloan- Radio Documentary on Immortal Technique
  Listen  

Lyrics

• Sweeping Statements

Video

Crossing the BLVD multimedia

Photo Gallery

Press

• What the Critics Say [+ Show ]
  

  "Life is a post-modern neo-fascist garbage dump and Sloan's's Denial of the Fittest determinedly rak..."Life is a post-modern neo-fascist garbage dump and Sloan's's Denial of the Fittest determinedly rakes through the detritus. It is a highly articulate show... Judith Sloan is funny, intimate, sexy and very frightening..."
  The Stage Thom Dibdin (London)
  
  "A world view that sees comedy and tragedy as two bones of the same skeleton in the closet. Superb!."
  The Scotsman (Scotland's National Newspaper) Sara O'Sullivan (London)
  
  "Ms. Sloan's art and teaching cross-pollinate: She uses immigrant stories that she and her husband have compiled -- dozens of them are included in a 2003 book, Crossing the Blvd -- to demonstrate how to shape narrative and to get students talking about their lives. And the students flood her with new material." Anne Barnard, New York Times
  "Sloan wickedly skewers stereotypes... screws up her face with Lily Tomlinesque elasticity. Plus, Sloan's a good juggler!"
  The Village Voice Evelyn McDonnell
  
  "Crossing the BLVD is an offbeat ethnic tour of one of the country's most ethnically diverse counties.... riveting stories about a new wave of immigrants to America... "
  The New York Times Corey Kilgannon
  
  "She is one part Studs Terkel, one part Lily Tomlin, two-parts originality."
  The Herald Bloomington, Indiana
  
  "Crossing the BLVD is a whirlwind tour and love poem of what has often been called the most racially and ethnically diverse county in America. In the tradition of the playwright Anna Deavere Smith, Ms. Sloan regularly performs Crossing the BLVD at schools, museums and community events, adopting the personae (and respectfully mimicking the accents) of the varied immigrants whose stories are in the book..."
  The New York Times, City Room Blog, Sewell Chan
  
  "Immigrant life in Queens, as told in the intimate, rich, comic, ironic and sad stories so often seen but not heard in America's big cities... Archie Bunker doesn't live here anymore -- not in the Queens of Crossing the Blvd. The first-person narratives are engaging... The stories are so different, and yet many of the immigrants lives are so similar... What links them all is the desperation and desire that brought them here. As one immigrant says in Crossing the BLVD, 'America can do without you, but you can't do without America'."
  The Washington Post
  
  Winner 2004 Brendan Gill Prize
  A celebratory chronicle of the immigrant experience in New York, Crossing the BLVD is a Whitmanesque book that reveals a staggering array of humanity... [it] chronicles life in Gotham in both its despair and boundless promise. The first-person narratives are drawn from audio-taped interviews, while the book's ever-changing graphics and typefaces mirror the rich pastiche of religion, language and tradition that coexists in the borough... chosen for its ability to convey the inspired resiliency of the myriad communities that contribute to the city's dynamism."
  The Municipal Art Society of NY.
  The Brendan Gill prize is awarded annually to the creator of a book, essay, poem, lyric, song, composition, play, painting, sculpture, landscape or any other work of art which best captures the energy and spirit of New York.
  
  "Behind the drab storefronts and nondescript homes that define the borough, Sloan and Lehrer discover a soulful place teaming with immigrants from Mexico to Australia whose stories unfold in a kaleidoscope of color..."
  CNN
  
  "Crossing the BLVD boldly carries the tradition of oral history into the 21st Century... electrifying collage of voices, faces, and spirits, capturing the true elasticity and inclusiveness of American culture."
  Eve Ensler, author, oral historian, performer The Vagina Monologues
  
  "A new album that uses real-life stories as a starting point for meaningful music: Crossing the BLVD by Warren Lehrer, Judith Sloan and Scott Johnson is a rich, varied listening experience, a demonstration of the way you can explore the world without leaving home. BLVD emphasises the rhythmic musicality of everyday speech... you hear laughter, sorrow and many moving tales of hardship, flight, splintered families and the difficulties of assimilation... Dynamic pieces from spoken-word recordings - the vocal samples leap out of the speakers... The editing and juxtaposition of voices can be subtle, allowing straight testimony to come through, or extravagantly artful, complex, and exhilarating... The book is a turbo-driven eye-witness guide with riveting first-person testimonies."
  The Guardian John L Walters
  
  Crossing the BLVD book and CD featured as a "Global Hit"
  An incredible and moving story... Sloan and Lehrer spent three years talking to immigrants and refugees in Queens, traveling the world, in a sense, while never leaving their backyard... a place where new immigrants from every corner of the globe come to start their lives in America. The result is a unique multimedia project. Oral History with a twist!"
  The World, PRI Marco Werman

Setlist

Hour and 20 minute performance of characters, monologues, and songs including:
Yo Miss; 2 min.
Sweeping Statements, 6 minutes 47 seconds.
Lizette, Just Like Aristotle
6 AM, 2001, 6 minutes.
Hello, Miss 2 min.
Across the Bridge: You Don't Have to Leave the Country to Do Human Rights Work. 6 min.
We Look Like Sisters, 4 minutes.

Crossing the BLVD: strangers, neighbors, aliens in a new America. two versions: 1 hour 15 minute full performance. Can be performed as a shorter excerpt.

Basic Requirements

Calendar