New York based Judith Stevens-Ly served as the 2010 MTA Playwriting Competition’s final adjudicator.  Stevens-Ly will also be attending the MTA festival to host the staged readings of the winning production in the adult and youth playwriting competitions.  Stevens-Ly will also host a Playwrights Roundtable on Saturday at 1:00 p.m.

 Australian born Judith Stevens-Ly has directed and nurtured new plays as Artisic Director of the Hysterick Theatre Company in Tokyo, at the Ensemble Studio Theatre, Looking Glass Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club, HERE Arts Center, Manhattan Theatre Source, Cherry Lane Theatre in New York City, the New York and Philadelphia Fringe Festivals and at BRIC in Brooklyn.  She has been honored as an Invited Featured Artist for the Last Frontier Playwright’s Conference in Alaska for the past four years and is currently a member of its National Advisory Board.  Since 2007 Judith has been an invited script advisor for the New York Musical Festival. She served as Associate Artistic Director for the First Look Theatre Company at the Rita and Burton Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, directing new works and producing festivals of new works by the Master Degree program candidates.  She has also taught the Graduate Playwrighting Lab and Directing for Playwrights in this program. She is currently involved with the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival as a director, dramaturg, and respondent for the New Plays Program and has been invited as guest respondent and judge for Region III Festival in 2010.  In March 2008 she directed the nationally reviewed premiere of Anton’s Women by Donna Banicevich Gera at the Maidment Theatre in Auckland, New Zealand. Most recently Judith, Executive Creative Director of Loose Change Productions as director and co-producer, took the new play Couples Counseling by Carey Lovelace to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe to sold out houses and had reviews and articles in the Sunday Times, The Scotsman and,  the Evening News.  “. . . the director, the cast . . . rise to Lovelace’s challenge with an enthusiasm, edge and skill…”Jim Ferguson  Edinburgh Evening News Aug 2009