Judith Sloan is a masterful actor/dialectition and a sublime mixologist of sound. She blends both gifts in her newest play, "YO MISS!," in which she channels her own family's traumas through the experiences of immigrant and minority teens whom she has taught in arts programs over the last two decades.
The piece ushers audiences into international high schools--some disquieted by ethnic tensions--and to an "alternate sentencing institution (a last stop before jail) where teens struggle to master self-control. Sloan explains the life events and coincidences that landed her a first gig as a teaching artist, then begins playing her students with the simplest of adjustments--an accent, a headscarf. Thereupon she fortifies the scene with crowds of recorded characters whose voices (some real, some her own creations) she mixes live onstage, operating several MIDI controllers with her fingers and feet. A world of immigrant and alienated teens dances before our eyes in a fusion of the arts of theater, radio, poetry, and music. We watch as Sloan discovers--through the prism of the young peoples' struggles and buried traumas--the untimely deaths and Holocaust experiences of her own family which bond her to her struggling students. La MaMa, 74 East 4th Street (East Village) will present the work's world premiere run March 4 to 13, 2016. The play is written, performed and sound engineered by Judith Sloan and accompanied by Josh Henderson on violin (March 4-6) and Andrew Griffin on viola (March 11-13).
Judith Sloan is an actress and radio/audio producer known for her one woman performances. She has spent 17 years performing and teaching in schools and jails, where she has encountered and reported on immigration stories, cultural clashes, and generation gaps. While teaching theater to multinational young people in Queens high schools, Sloan found that her immigrant students were exhausted to the point of helplessness by having to translate everything from their languages into English and sometimes back again. Unable to remember English lines for a play, Sloan took another tactic to reach them: having them recite tongue-twisters in their native languages. Their poetic, energetic vocalizations led to the creation of "YO MISS!" by inspiring Sloan to create the complex mix of sounds, music, and voices that distinguishes the playing style of the piece.
In the performance, Sloan juxtaposes her own traumatic experiences with those of her students, revealing how she learns from her students as they learn from her about finding resilience and humanity in each other's stories. She records their complex, poetic, energetic tongue twisters, mixes them into a soundscape and plays the mix for a hip hop music producer, which brings her into the world of rapper Immortal Technique and his producer Touré Harris, from whom she learns about the "culture of desperation" that gave birth to an entire new art form. It was the same impulse that launched her on a peculiar personal quest that landed her, a solo artist, into school programs with new immigrant teenagers. Sloan also reveals the ripple effects of the Holocaust on her family and how they interconnect with today's young immigrants and refugees. The show is a testament to the pluck, ingenuity and creativity of those who dedicate their lives to connecting with refugees of today -- teaching artists, human rights activists, teachers and social workers -- who, like Sloan, find themselves in the midst of cultural collisions that become a catalyst for transformation. Her empathy and perceptiveness have the potential to inspire much-needed understanding amid the inflammatory rhetoric that outweighs reason in our current electoral season.
"YO MISS!" was developed under the guidance of dramaturg
Morgan Jenness, with sound design by
Judith Sloan. The original score includes contributions by composers: Frank London, David Krakauer, Taylor Rivelli, MiWi La Lupa, Adam MJ Hill , Red Ukachukwu,
Guy Klucevsek, Dave Guy. The infusion of hip hop culture was influenced by underground rapper Immortal Technique and his producer, Touré "Southpaw" Harris. Contributing sound engineers also include Josh Valleau and
Deep Singh. Development of "YO MISS!" has been supported by the Queens Council on the Arts, LaGuardia Performing Arts Center, Viper Records, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and has been developed over the past several years in workshop presentations at Joe's Pub, the
Danny Simmons Gallery and Nuyorican Poets Cafe.
Reflections by Columbia University graduate students to workshops of
Judith Sloan's work in the university's Oral History program offer unusual and articulate reflections on Sloan's techniques in giving a theatrical place to refugees' everyday voices. Pablo Baeza from Argentina wrote, "It perhaps seems naïve to believe that large questions of assimilation, interethnic conflict, and learning from difference could be resolved simply through high school theater. However, Sloan's work and practice as a teacher invokes the need for communities, especially those transformed by immigration in the way of Queens, one of the most ethnically diverse communities on the planet, to face the global as inherently local. For the high school kids that Sloan works with, theater is a way to learn English, to explore becoming American, without leaving the homeland behind." Steven Palmer added, "The only problem with
Judith Sloan's work is that it isn't replicated as a curriculum requirement through this country. Given the laser-like focus on differences in this culture -- race, gender, sexual preference, documentation status, religion -- Sloan's work could be instrumental in alleviating these tensions. The presidential campaign is stirring up hate-speech at an alarming rate. And
Donald Trump is the head cheerleader of this not-so-funny clown car as he slams Muslim-Americans and immigrants. Sloan's work could be the antidote to this trajectory by illustrating the struggles of Muslim Americans and immigrants while normalizing their place in our society."
Judith Sloan has been described as "One part Lilly Tomlin, one part
Studs Terkel, two parts originality." As an actress, she is known for a collage of absurd-to-touching characters, combined with standup juggling and shrewd commentary on international and social issues. She is also an audio artist, writer, radio producer, human rights activist, educator and poet. She has created interdisciplinary works in audio and theater with her husband, visual artist and writer Warren Lehrer, since 1990. Critics have consistently lauded her fine humor, apt political commentary, and on-target sense of character. Her earlier performance works included "Denial of the Fittest," based on her own coming to terms with the deaths of her father and grandmother when she was a young girl (it was nominated for best comedy performance at the Edinburgh International Fringe Festival) and "A Tattle Tale: Eyewitness in Mississippi," a one-woman show based on the true story of Andrea Gibbs, a deputy sheriff who blew the whistle on abuses of inmates in a Mississippi prison.
Her recent works include 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. Much of her work has been developed at La MaMa and her plays have been produced there and by other theaters including
The Public Theater, The Theatre Workshop (Scotland), The Smithsonian Institution and the Market Theatre (Johannesburg). Her commentaries, plays, poetry and documentaries have aired on National Public Radio, New York Public Radio, WBEZ Chicago, PRI, & the BBC. Sloan received a 2013-2014 New York Foundation on the Arts (NYFA) fellowship in Sound/Music, individual artist grants from the Queens Council on the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts.
Her audio, radio and performance works have won First Place and First Runner up finalist Missouri Review National Audio Competition 2011, 2009, 2008; 2005 BAXten Artist In Progress Award; 2005 Short Doc Competition from the Third Coast International Audio Festival.
Sloan is a member of the adjunct faculty at Gallatin School of Individualized Study at NYU and a member of the Dramatist Guild and the Network of Ensemble Theaters and the Alliance of Resident Theaters, NY (ARTNY). A frequent guest lecturer on college campuses on issues of diversity, human rights, and the arts, her work has been published by Second Story Press, W.W. Norton, Alternet, and The New York Times. She has worked with immigrant and refugee teenagers, many who come from war-zones, since 1998. Her work with EarSay Youth Voices at the International High School at LaGuardia Community College in Queens garnered her a Partnership in Education Award in June 2009.
Sloan has directed a theater workshop for 15 years at the International High School, at LaGuardia Community College for students with limited English proficiency who have been in the USA for less than four years. Run by EarSay, the nonprofit group founded by Sloan and her husband, Warren Lehrer, the theater workshops are partially sustained by state grants, the school, and proceeds from performances and book sales. "YO MISS!" follows the multimedia project (book, cd and performance) "Crossing the BLVD: strangers, neighbors, aliens in a new America," written by Sloan and Lehrer which was culled from complex weaving of impersonations and recordings. It contained oral histories drawn from years of interviews in Queens with immigrants and refugees who had migrated to the US before and after 9/11 and won the 2004
Brendan Gill Prize from the Municipal Art Society of NY.
Excerpts from "YO MISS!" first appeared as public radio pieces, two of which won the Missouri Review National Audio Competition: "Sweeping Statements" (First Place) and "What's Your Status" (First Runner Up). A work-in-progress of the play was mounted at Nuyorican Poets Cafe January 16 and 17, 2016.
