Producing Artistic Director
Judy Tate, Co-Founder & Artistic Director of ASP, is a four-time Emmy Award-winning writer, playwright, producer, actor, and educator with a Master’s degree from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in Arts and Public Policy (as an honors graduate who received the Founder's Day Award, Seidman Award and Beinecke Award). Her TV writing includes Beyond the Gates, Days of Our Lives, As the World Turns, and Another World. With a distinguished career spanning television, theatre, and education, she has made significant contributions to storytelling and the arts. Tate’s work often focuses on amplifying underrepresented voices and fostering community dialogue. She teaches Playwriting and Theatre Arts at NYU’s Steinhardt School for Culture, Education and Human Development, and is a Senior Teaching Artist at the Manhattan Theatre Club.
Messeret Stroman-Wheeler
Associate Producer, Social Media
Messeret Stroman Wheeler is an award-winning actor and producer. Winner of an Audelco Award (and three-time nominee), Ms. Stroman Wheeler was featured by Broadway.com for her performance as LaTonya Dinkins in Roundabout Theatre Company's production of Blue. Most recently, she was awarded Best Actress at the Orlando Urban Film Festival for her portrayal of Mary Church Terrell in Keepers of the Flame.
Messeret’s TV appearances include The Best Man: The Final Chapters, The Sopranos, Law & Order, Law & Order: SVU, alongside numerous commercials—including Disney, McDonald’s, IKEA and more. Her theatre credits include Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Fast Blood (BroadwayWorld Best Actress Nominee), Insurrection: Holding History, numerous seasons with The ASP Arts Collective, and early work with the Negro Ensemble Company.
Young Park
Digital Strategist, Technical Producer
Young Park is a producer, writer, designer, and digital strategist with a strong commitment to community-centered collaboration. She has worked extensively in the nonprofit sector with organizations including ASP Arts Collective, terraNOVA Collective, and The Youngish Professionals Committee. With roots in the music industry, Young has contributed to major cultural events such as Euphoria Festival, SXSW, and The Wolf Tree Film Festival. Her work has been recognized by Eventbrite’s “6 Social Media Habits of Successful Festival Organizers” and The New York Times’ “Livestreams to Watch: A Rock the Vote Concert and Juneteenth Events.”
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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.
Camille Thomas
Producing Assistant
Camille Simone Thomas (She/Her) is a 5th generation Detroiter through her father’s side and a first generation Jamaican through her mothers. It’s important for her to name this because her work most often interrogates cultural legacies, familial healing, spirituality + ancestral wisdom, and the general kicking and screaming of how Black femmes get free despite the oppressive forces of colonialism, capitalism, and white supremacy. Her plays have been workshopped at New York Theatre Workshop, Playwrights Horizons, Sanguine Theatre Company, Blackboard Playwriting series, Lime Arts Theatre company, American Slavery Project, The Obie Award-winning Harlem9 and Detroit Public Theatre Company, Dixon Place, Workshop Theatre, Barter Theatre Company, The National Women's Theatre Festival, The Brick, and more!
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.
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.