Producing Artistic Director
Judy Tate, Co-Founder & Artistic Director, is a four-time Emmy Award winning writer and WGAe award recipient. She’s written scripts and stories for several TV shows and her plays have been presented in theatres throughout the United States. As a teaching artist she’s led hundreds of activity-based workshops for a variety of educational outreach programs and is co-author of the playwriting manual used in schools for the Theatre Development Fund. She is the founding Artistic Director of Stargate Theatre Company, a work readiness project for justice-involved young men, sponsored by Sharon Sullivan through Manhattan Theatre Club Education. She’s an alumna of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts conservatory program and was an honors graduate receiving the Founder's Day Award, Seidman Award and Beinecke Award. For more info:
Messeret Stroman-Wheeler
Associate Producer, Social Media
Messeret is an NYC actor/voice-over artist who hails from Florida. She has a theatre degree from Florida A&M University magna cum laude. Messeret has worked at Arena Stage, Hartford Stage, Roundabout Theatre Company, Delaware Theatre Company, StageWest, The Negro Ensemble Company Manhattan Theatre Club’s education and NYTW. Her appearances include The Sopranos, Another World, Law & Order, as a spokesperson for HBO and a host of national on-camera & voice-over commercials. She is a recipient of an Audelco award and was featured as a Fresh Face on Broadway.com. Messeret recently starred in American Slavery Project and Civic Ensemble’s co-production of Judy Tate’s “Fast Blood.”
Young Park
Digital Strategist, Technical Producer
Young is a Digital Strategist and Technical Producer who optimizes her expertise in media, coding, and design to communicate across a wide spectrum of B2B/B2C networks. As a strong advocate of community collaboration, she has worked extensively in the nonprofit sector with organizations such as ASP Arts Collective, Eastend Studio & Gallery, New Federal Theatre, terraNOVA Collective, Vera List Center & The Youngish Professionals Committee. Initially getting her start in the music industry, Young has also collaborated with festivals including Euphoria Festival, SXSW, and Wolf Tree Film Festival. She was also featured in Eventbrite's: “6 Social Media Habits of Successful Festival Organizers.” young-park.net
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Simone Barros
Producer, ASP audio-dramas with soundscaping and minimalist visual scores
Simone creates moving image and soundscapes for film and theater.
Born in Atlanta, Simone has screened her short films and soundscapes in New York and Cleveland after graduating from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts receiving the Martin Scorsese Filmmaker Grant and Tisch Dean Craft Award. Simone worked postproduction for filmmakers Judith Helfand, Ric Burns, Sam Pollard and Spike Lee. The Cleveland Public Theater produced Simone’s two short plays and a staged reading for her full-length play “Dating Godfrey” a surreal search for a most elusive, most divine lover only to reveal both the tragedy and the power of self-manifestation.
Simone teaches filmmaking at Pratt Institute and co-teaches dramatic writing at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Stargate program after having unexpectedly embarked on a teaching career at Cleveland Institute of Art and Cuyahoga Community College which intensely transformed her filmmaking practice.
Arts Cleveland awarded Simone a Creative Workforce Fellowship to create the short experimental documentary, “What Remain,” a cinematic study of memory and history as collective memory revolving around a 91 year-old woman’s crusade to save a house rumored to be an Underground Railroad stop, currently in production as a feature documentary.
As an audiobook director, Simone has directed acclaimed authors including Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Jacqueline Woodson and Ibram X. Kendi.
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Camille Thomas
Producing Assistant
Camille Simone Thomas (She/Her) is a Detroit-born Jamaican-American multi-hyphenate playwright, screenwriter, slam poet, producer, performer, and educator She was a 2023 Broadway Advocacy Coalition Artivism fellow where her play “What We Deserve” premiered as a staged reading at MCC theatre.
Her plays have been workshopped at New York Theatre Workshop, Playwrights Horizons, Sanguine Theatre Company, featured with The Obie Award-winning Harlem9 and Detroit Public Theatre Company, Dixon Place, Workshop Theatre, The Road Theatre Company, Barter Theatre Company, The National Women's Theatre Festival, Lime Arts Theatre Company, American Slavery Project, and Blackboard playwriting series. Her web series “Gro Up” premiered at the Academy Award qualifying Reel Sisters film festival and was also shown at the PanAfrican Film Festival and Martha’s Vineyard virtual film festival.
She was a 2023 New Harmony Project finalist, 2023 Catskills Creative Residency finalist, a 2023 Van Lier New Voices Fellowship Semi-finalist and a 2022 Art House Inkubator Finalist. She’s an associate artist with the Sanguine Theatre company. She’s had fellowships with The Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute’s DEAR fellowship and The Theatre Producers of Color.
Melissa Maxwell
Unheard Voices, Director
Melissa Maxwell’s directing credits include many Off Broadway productions. For a full list of her credits and accomplishments, visit her website: melissamaxwell.com
Shawn René Graham
Unheard Voices, Dramaturg
Shawn René Graham is a freelance writer and dramaturg from San Jose, California who has worked with many writers including Kia Corthron, Nilo Cruz, Steve Harper, Eduardo Machado, Walter Mosley, Lynn Nottage, Suzan Lori Parks, John Henry Redwood, Guillermo Reyes, Paul Rudnick, Susan Sontag, Dominic A. Taylor, Edwin Sanchez, Judy Tate, and Naomi Wallace. Ms. Graham holds degrees from California State University, Los Angeles and the American Repertory Theatre Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard University. She lives in the Village of Harlem, NY.
Dianne Kirksey-Floyd
In The Parlour, Director (1950 - 2020)
Dianne Kirksey-Floyd was an African-American filmmaker, writer, producer, and actress in New York City. Her productions have been nominated for a combined 16 Audelco Awards and recently Kirksey-Floyd has produced a short film, "Sweet Dreams, Momma," as well as a short documentary, "Bama's Black Babies Are Dying." As a student leader during the Civil Rights Movement, she led marches and protests through Greene County in support of the Voters' Rights Act. She was the first Black student at the University of Alabama, named "Bama Belle," and the first Black member of the homecoming court. Kirksey-Floyd was also a founding member of the UA African American Association (renamed the Black Student Union), the first Black woman to be an officer of the Associated Women's Students organization, and received the honorary rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the Alabama State Militia for her leadership and service to the state. She has been honored by the UA for contributions to racial and gender equality and is listed as one of the most important Black alumni. Dianne directed ASP’s “In the Parlour” performed at Harlem’s National Black Theatre, D.C.’s March On Washington Film Festival, and its YouTube Radio Drama version.