Artist-In-Residence
Education
- M.F.A., Brooklyn College
- B.A., University of Maryland, Baltimore
Contact Info
View Full Curriculum Vitae »
Biography
Judy began designing professionally at 19 as a junior at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Prior to graduation, the ACTF award was bestowed upon the cast and crew of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. Judy received hers for lighting design.
After graduation, she joined RCEDA, a children’s touring company which performed in upstate New York and southern Maryland. When the tour ended, she joined a small scenic company and later became the costume designer for Essex Community College and the first two seasons of Cockpit in Court Summer Theatre. In addition, she began designing for local area dinner theatres. In less than three years, she had designed and built over twenty productions
In 1978, she left Essex and traveled to Lake Placid designing a touring production of Private Lives. Later, she returned to her family’s home in Connecticut where she contacted Brooklyn College and was given a full scholarship for Costume Design and Construction. She entered graduate school in 1979 and by June of 1981, she had designed costumes for fifteen productions, both main stage and thesis, as well as designing and running lights for a number of smaller student productions. While in graduate school, she was given the opportunity to work on several Broadway and regional productions including Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and Hay Fever.
Throughout 1981 and 1982, she worked at several costume production houses in Manhattan working on Cats, coming to Broadway for the first time and Nicol Williamson’s production of MacBeth, In 1982, she joined the New York Shakespeare Festival and until 1987, she worked on more than eighty productions as a stitcher, junior draper, design assistant and wardrobe supervisor. Some of her favorites include; Richard III, Pirates of Penzance, A Chorus Line, The Golem, Tracers, Hamlet (both the Diane Venora and Kevin Kline versions) and Aunt Dan and Lemon. She also dressed several Broadway productions, including A Chorus Line and assisted several designers with outside projects, as well as designing a few commercials.
In 1987, she returned to Baltimore and became the Resident Costume Designer at Toby’s Dinner Theatre. Some of her favorite shows include; The Mystery of Edwin Drood (having worked on the original in the Park and later when it opened on Broadway), 42nd Street and Pippin. She also found time to work at the Folger Library Theatre and various film projects in the Baltimore/DC area..
In late 1988, she left the theatre world for Corporate America taking a job as a graphics consultant. By 1991, she connected with old friend and director, Todd Pearthree, asking her to design a production of Gypsy. Ten years later, the two had collaborated on more than thirty productions including A Secret Garden, Into the Woods, Ernest in Love, A Streetcar Named Desire and Kiss of the Spider Woman.
In 2002, she returned to Toby’s and designed The Jazz Singer, Jekyll and Hyde (winner of the Helen Hayes award for Best Director) and Fiddler on the Roof, teching the show during the infamous blizzard of 2003.
January of 2003 brought her to Regent University as Resident Costume Designer. Since that time, she has designed and produced all theatrical productions as well as SYN, winner of six national awards including the Aurora Gold Award and Special Jury prize Worldfest Houston.
