Julia Lee Barclay-Morton, PhD, is an award-winning writer and theater director, produced and published internationally; her newest play Respairation or You Have to Unmute Yourself—written while recovering from long-haul COVID and in the midst of an autism diagnostic process—will be performed as part of IATI's Women's Festival in March 2022; a 22-hour radio broadcast of two decades of Julia's experimental stage texts in collaboration with sound artist Viv Corringham commissioned by Radio Art Zone for Esch2022 European Capital of Culture in Luxembourg will be broadcast in September 2022; recent stories and essays published in [PANK], Prairie Schooner and Heavy Feather Review; winner of Nomadic Press Bindle Prize for story published as chapbook, and play On the edge of/a cure was produced by Rogue Players at The Playroom in 2019. Her play Shit was given a staged reading at IATI as part of the Cimientos play development program in 2018, and her plays have been performed in NYC at such venues as HERE, The Brick, Red Room, and St. Mark's. A Best of the Net nominee, she was also included in the Indie Theater Hall of Fame in 2014. She has been in residence at Vermont Studio Center and the Wesleyan Writers Conference. Other publications include Ohio Edit, Prentice-Hall, Stockholm Review, Gertrude, The Other Stories, Burning House Press, and TL;DR. Stage texts have been anthologized by NYTE and Level4 Press. She founded Apocryphal Theatre when in London (2003-11), and was awarded a practice-as-research PhD by Northampton, UK in performance as philosophy; her BA is from Wesleyan University. Now living in NYC, she is writing a memoir about being diagnosed on the autism spectrum in her late 50s and how an intensive yoga teacher training led her there. Julia also paints, coaches, teaches writing and yoga.

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Website: https://www.theunadaptedones.com
FB: julialeebarclaymorton
TW: @wilhelminapitfa
IG: @julialeebarclayauthor

MORE ABOUT ME:
My most gratifying moments in theater have happened when I have thrown out all the rules and gone into a room with a text or an idea open to what might happen. My first stage text Word To Your Mama emerged when I realized watching a Mabou Mines workshop: oh there Are No Rules! I realize now in light of a recent autism diagnosis that my stage texts probably look the way they do (collage texts with no line assignments, more musical than narrative, philosophical than emotive) because of how I am wired. I am looking forward to being back in a real rehearsal room with actual humans to see what I create now knowing consciously that I am neuroqueer. My dearest recent memory is having Jean-Claude van Itallie show up to my last show On the edge of/a cure at the Playroom in May 2019. My most life-changing theater experience was directing The Serpent at Wesleyan, which he had written the text in collaboration with Joseph Chaikin and The Open Theater decades earlier. Especially since he died a few months ago, I am grateful to have been able to tell him how important he was to me and to see how happy the play made him. What I want artistic directors to know is that my stage texts can be taken by any adventurous director (or me) and made into something beautiful in collaboration with brave performers who can be of any gender, ethnicity, neurotype, dis/ability, race, sexuality, age, or body-type. These texts speak to that which is unheard, unseen, and unloved within and without. They get underneath the meaning making machinery to show how it works, so we can imagine new realities. Right here. Right now. Take a risk, bring me aboard. You won't regret it.

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
A new play and memoir about being diagnosed on autism spectrum at age 57 and how an intensive yoga teacher training led me there. I am polishing up Respairation or Your Have to Unmute Yourself. I also paint. As a writer who directs, I want desperately to be back in an actual theater and look forward to when that is possible again. As someone who was hit with COVID and long haul COVID for well over a year, which landed me in hospital, I cannot work in actual theater spaces until it is truly safe. This is painful but necessary, because I want to live. However, happily, I am now finally recovering. My main focus since March 2020 has been healing. Only since this past summer have I been able to truly focus on creating again.

KEYWORDS
​Experimental, Autistic, Political, Philosophical, Feminist, Collaborative, Dance, Live Art, Time-based Art, Performance, Neuroqueer

Judy is an actress and playwright whose frustration with the lack of stories by and about women, especially over 50, led her to writing them. She creates alternative structures reflecting the voices she has lived and heard. Her current focus is the destruction and reconstruction of patriarchal, canonical stories, recreating them from a woman's point of view. Driven by aural and visual senses, she explores methods of using those tools as text. Her recent play, Gerutha and Margaret, was a semi-finalist in the 2021 New Works Festival at the Garry Marshall Theatre in Los Angeles and received both a table read and online staged reading via Chicago Dramatists’. As an actress she has extensive experience on stage, film, commercials and VO. She is a founding member of Telling Humans playwright studio and Burnished Collective, a grassroots salon for women artists and arts lovers over 40. Currently pursuing an interdisciplinary MFAW at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago, she is deepening her lifelong storytelling love to include playwriting, performance studies, and a digital solo voice layering writing, performance, music, photography and video. An alumna of Northwestern University, she has a BS Speech/Theatre. 

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA:
Website: http://www.judyleasteele.com 
TW:@JudyLeaSteele
IG: @judyleasteele_off_book
NPX: https://newplayexchange.org/users/19492/judy-lea-steele

MORE ABOUT ME
I feel most like myself when I . . . . . .am making art. The literal process of making art itself. The research, discovery, conceptualization, drafting, workshopping, editing, rehearsal, collaboration, community, all of it. It’s invigorating. The process that makes my blood run. How do you overcome disappointment? I take a moment to wallow, then examine the source of the disappointment for truths I might not have realized, seen or wanted to see previously. It’s important for me to chew on it and sort it out verbally. For that I turn to a few close friends and colleagues who are generous, constructive, direct and on occasion patient in the nth degree. And then I go to the nearest body of water/sky/trees and walk, walk, walk, think, think, think, listen, listen, listen. The enormity of the world clears my head and rights any remaining skewed priorities in a way not many things can. And back to work! It's a lifelong journey. If you could bring one change to theatre, what would it be? Creation of accessible vehicles for self production that would eliminate or bypass some of the gate keeping hurdles so entrenched in this industry. What do you want ADs to know? Women in our demographic are among the most consistent consumers of theatre, perhaps in the highest numbers. (The current situation has affected all stats of course.) We want to see complex, fully dimensional female characters over 40! The potential is woefully unexplored and untapped. Make the choice to prioritize it. What is your favorite thing to do when not writing? Go outside and take photos, images with off kilter perspectives that inspire me and often end up in the development process for my work. Make music, listening, singing or playing instruments. Read, read, read, soak in as much art as possible from a variety of mediums and continue to be curious about the crazy animals we humans are. 

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
I am a in the midst of graduate study at the School of the Art Institute, deepening my practice by weaving photography, video, performance studies and playwriting. Additionally I am developing a solo voice that uses the previous disciplines plus music to create personal performance works. Some are designed to be live, some to be delivered via digital platforms as video poems, lyric essays or direct address. At present, in both plays and solo work, I am exploring concepts of duality as lived and seen in my own life.

KEYWORDS
​experimental, alternative, feminist, political, equality, historical, adaptations, fable/folktales