Applied Theatre and Racial Justice: Care, Community, Change — A Celebration
About this Event
📅 Tuesday, September 8, 2026
⏰ 6:00PM ET
📍Skipper's NYC | 2876 Broadway, New York, NY 10025
🎟️ RSVP is FREE but space is limited, so reserve your spot today!
Book reception celebrating four contributors of the book, Applied Theatre and Racial Justice: Care, Community, Change —Judy Tate, Melissa Murray-Mutch, Kimani Fowlin, and Mei Ann Teo. Co-edited by Lisa Biggs and Eunice S. Ferreira. Includes a toast and refreshments. Guests will also enjoy 20% off the entire store (Skipper's NYC), while attending our event.
The book documents and amplifies lessons from practitioners and scholars who use performance to create models of transformation, collective learning, and liberation.
📕 Lisa Biggs (Editor) is an associate professor in the Department of Africana Studies/Rites and Reason Theatre at Brown University, USA, where she teaches theatre and performance studies. She is an actor, playwright, and the recipient of the 2023 Lila A. Heston Award from the National Communications Association and the Errol Hill Award from the American Society for Theatre Research.
📕 Eunice S. Ferreira (Editor) is an associate professor in the Theater Department at Skidmore College, USA, where she teaches Black theatre, theatre history, mixed race performance, translation, and theatre for social justice and change. She is a director, dramaturg, actor, and a leading scholar on theatre of Cabo Verde, West Africa.
📕 Judy Tate (Contributor) has won four daytime Emmys and a Writers Guild of America award for her television work. She currently writes for Michele Val Jean’s history-making soap, Beyond the Gates. Her theatre awards include the Manhattan Theatre Club’s (MTC) Playwriting Fellowship and the New Professional Theatre Playwriting Award. Her plays have been presented around the country and the U.K. Judy is the producing artistic director of the American Slavery Project (ASP Arts Collective), the founding artistic director of MTC’s Stargate Theatre, and a 30+ year member of Ensemble Studio Theatre. She holds an M.A. from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in Arts/Politics. aspartscollective.org
📕 Melissa Murray-Mutch (Contributor) is a professional actor, playwright, director and co-founder and Producing Artistic Director of Gritty City Theatre Company. She is currently living in Hamilton, Ontario and created the Canadian Slavery Project, a collaborative public history effort by local writers and actors crafting monologues and plays based on historical colonial fugitive-slave advertisements in Canada. The project is in development, working towards a theatrical production titled “Unheard Voices Canada” where actors will vividly portray the untold stories of enslaved individuals in Canada, ensuring they are not relegated to obscurity. The project is modeled after ASP Art's American Slavery Project in NYC, which Melissa was a part of as an actor and collaborator with Judy Tate. You can read more about the project in the newly released book, Applied Theatre and Racial Justice: Care, Community, Change, published by Routledge Press in 2026, and more about Gritty City Theatre on our social media @canadiansleveryproject and website, GrittyCityTheatre.org.
📕 Kimani Fowlin (Contributor) is a dancer, choreographer, and educator. She was awarded the New York State Dance Education Association’s Outstanding Dance Educator Award. International work includes performing in Russia and Ghana, and choreographing and performing in Greece. A dance faculty member at Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University for over twenty-four years, she also teaches dance residencies for the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) and other New York City arts organizations. She helped launch Black Dance Stories, the story-sharing and discussion series with Charmaine Warren. Kimani is an associate professor and chair of the Theatre and Dance Department and directs the dance program at Drew University. Kimani received the 2021 Center for Civic Engagement Faculty Leadership Award. danielburkholder.com/embodied-truth
📕 Mei Ann Teo (Contributor) is the artistic director of New Work at Pink Fang (formerly Ping Chong and Company). A theatremaker, director, dramaturg, and artistic leader, Teo makes theatre at the intersection of artistic/civic/contemplative practice, across genres, including musical theatre, intermedial participatory work, classics, and documentary theatre that has been experienced in international festivals and across the U.S. Teo has served as the artistic director of Musical Theatre Factory, the associate artistic director and director of New Work at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and has taught extensively, including at Carnegie Mellon, Harvard, Pacific Union College, New York University, and Hampshire College. pinkfang.org/about/people/mei-ann-teo
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