Welcome!Years ago, I had a site called judyklass.com, but it got eaten ... and I went with judy-klass.com. And then, judyklass.com became available again! So, I bought it, and here we are! I hope you'll browse around, and learn a bit about my music, my books, my scripts and other stuff I have going on right now. If you want to give me a shout, I can be reached, as ever, at: [email protected].
My NEWS August 2024: Janno Media in the UK produced the short play Hacking Tyler, which I wrote with Ron Reed, as a podcast, and I'm so happy that when they presented it onstage in London, the terrific actors who are in the podcast reprised their roles. It's a science fiction play, but it also says something about the political moment we are in, around the world:
My short play Roughing It was produced in Petaluma, California, and my short play Take Down had a reading in Aurora, Colorado:
My full-length play Erica in Overdrive [formerly known as Kimberly in Overdrive] had a reading as the first play presented in a New Works Festival in Temple, Texas at the Temple Civic Theatre:
July 2024: I'm very proud that my short play Bug Rescuing is being translated into Ukrainian and will be produced onstage in Kharkiv, Ukraine at the end of July:
I'm looking forward to the release of this podcast:
I've learned that there will be a number of readings and productions of my plays in August. One will be a presentation of Hacking Tyler, a long one-act play I wrote with Ron Reed, on August 4th at the Chiswick Playhouse, upstairs from The Tabard in London, UK. It's being presented by The Scene, which did a wonderful job of turning Hacking Tyler into a podcast:
June 2024:
My science fiction short story called "Flesh Wounds" is in the June "Vulnerable" issue of Synkroniciti: 
May 2024: Lazy Bee Scripts in the UK has published my full-length play Country Fried Murder. It's a mystery set at a songwriting seminar. They're presenting it as a musical -- I think of it as a play with songs and song fragments. It contains my song "Drunk On One Corona," and the picture of the bottle of Corona Extra on every page of the script is beautiful:
If you'd like to check out the play a the site or buy it, you can click on the button below:
I was brought on board a musical project called Mushky and Mo to be the lyricist. There will be a reading on June 19th in NYC:
April 2024: My short play Book Of Life -- part of a radio reading of plays about AI.
March 2024. My new, unproduced musical High School Antigone was one of over 600 submissions to the Waterworks Festival run by Live Arts in Charlottesville, Virginia. It has been chosen as a Finalist in that festival.
My short science fiction/horror/political parable play The Trouble with "Slimes" was published online in Masque & Spectacle, and so were four sonnets of mine in a "Science Fiction Bitter Suite." 
February 2024 I traveled to Oxford, Mississippi to see the very fine premiere stage production of my play A Different Kind of Strong, which won Second Place in the Theatre Oxford competition:
My monologue in the voice of Lot's Wife called "Salt" will be published in Venus Theatre's anthology of monologues called Frozen Women/Flowing Thoughts.
January 2024 My short play Wounded Vanity, about a woman talking to her reflection in a vanity mirror, is in the Winter 2024 issue of Spellbinder Quarterly Magazine, published in the UK.
December 2023 -- My short play A Different Kind of Strong won 2nd Place in Theatre Oxford's 10-Minute Play Contest in Mississippi.
My short play Frame Within a Frame has been published in Synkroniciti.
Theatrical Shenigans in the UK released a podcast of talk among a panel of people involved with theater -- including me:
November 2023
My short play Untethered was part of a festival in Topanga in Western Los Angeles, with performances on November 4th and 5th: 
October 2023
With my husband Ron Reed, I wrote a short science fiction play called Hacking Tyler. It's been produced as a podcast by Janno Media in the UK, and they just released it as the finale episode of the Third Season of their podcast show called The Scene. It's a fine production; I hope you listen to it, at the button directly below! 
My short screenplay TUMBLE DRY is one of ten Finalists in the Cinema Street Women's Short Screenplay Competition.
August 2023 My short screenplay TUMBLE DRY is a Quarter-Finalist in the Filmmatics Short Screenplay Awards. 
July 2023 My short play SLOTH has been chosen as the play about that sin by the Emerald Theatre Company in Memphis for their festival in September. My slothful protagonist acquires a three-toed sloth as an imaginary friend/adviser in my first-ever talking-animal play! 
My short play HUMAN NATURE (CLOCK OF THE HEART) has been published online in Fleas on the Dog Magazine:
There was a Los Angeles reading of my short play: 
And there was an Ontario, Canada full production of another short play of mine: WHAT WE CAST OFF, WHAT WE KEEP:
My short horror play THE TROUBLE WITH "SLIMES" had a staged reading in the Redlands Theatre Festival in California:
Drunken Owl Theatre in Seattle did a reading of my short play BOOK OF LIFE:
May 2023 I've learned that my short play BOOK OF LIFE will be part of the 20th Anniversary celebration of WWIT in Washington D.C. 
My short play A Different Kind of Strong had staged readings:
April 2023 My short screenplay TUMBLE DRY has won Best Drama Script in a competition for short films and short screenplays: 
My full-length play HALLWAY HOUSE has been chosen as a Finalist by Murphys Creek Theatre in Murphys, California, and they will give it a concert-style staged reading in their 2023 Quill to Act Playwriting Festival in May. 
March 2023
My full-length play AFTER TARTUFFE has been published by Next Stage Press. It's available at nextstagepress.com: 
My short play TAKE DOWN is published in Synkroniciti:
February 2023 My unproduced full-length play COZY MURDER had a reading with Script2Stage2Screen in California: 
The short film version of my short play A DIFFERENT KIND OF STRONG is an Official Selection of the Direct Monthly Online Film Festival, and will stream from their site starting on February 6th: 
January 2023 I am proud and excited to announce that my full-length science fiction play in verse called AFTER TARTUFFE, which was produced in the Fresh Fruit Festival in NYC in 2015, and published in installments in The Courtship of Winds in 2022, is being published this year by Next Stage Press: 
My short play ROUGHING IT is in an Atlanta festival:
December 2022 My short play BUG RESCUING has been published in Ponder Review. They previously published my short play The Other Woman. 
September 2022
My unproduced full-length plays COZY MURDER and HALLWAY HOUSE had very fine rehearsed, staged readings with SkyPilot Theatre in Los Angeles. I flew to LA to attend, and do talk-backs with the audience after the readings. 
My short play FRAME WITHIN A FRAME won 1st Place in a contest run by Emerald Theatre in Memphis. After years of pandemic delays, the strong festival of winners and runners up was staged at last! 
My monologue/short play DIGGING MYSELF DEEPER IN is part of Asphalt Jungle Shorts in late September/Early October, performed outdoors in Ontario, Canada.
August 2022 I've learned that two of my unproduced full-length plays, HALLWAY HOUSE and COZY MURDER, will have staged readings in Los Angeles, California in September: 
La vida es un culebrón/Life Is a Soap Opera, a screenplay I co-wrote with Manuel Caldas Castro, is a Finalist in the New York Cinematography Awards:
July 2022 Carrollwood Players Theatre in Tampa, Florida included my short Zombie horror comedy called NIGHT OF THE LIVING RELATIVES in their festival of one-act plays: 
June 2022 My one-act play BABY VECTOR has been published in Contemporary One Act Plays, Volume 3. 
May 2022 My screenplay La vida es un culebrón/Life Is a Soap Opera, written with Manuel Caldas Castro, won the Silver Award in the Virgin Spring Cinefest competition, in India: 
My short play THE LOCKER ROOM was chosen to be part of a "scratch night" run by Scriptwriters & Co in the UK: 
My short play WHAT'S HELD BACK has been included in the beautiful new anthology Contemporary One Act Plays: 
My short play UNTETHERED was published in Fresh Words: 
February 2022:
I wrote and directed a short film called What If Science is Real? in 2020. It has won Best Indie Short Film in the SFAAF -- a film festival competition in Chile: 
January 2022:
My feature-length screenplay called La vida es un culebrón/Life Is a Soap Opera, written with Manuel Caldas Castro, became a Finalist/won an Honorable Mention in the Los Angeles Movie Awards competition. 
In January 2022, La vida es un culebrón/Life Is a Soap Opera became an Official Selection of the South Film and Arts Academy Festival, as did the short film I wrote and directed called What If Science Is Real? -- and the short film went on to win ...
The Culebrón/Life Is a Soap Opera screenplay became a Winner in the Only the Best Film Awards competition -- my co-writer, Manuel Caldas Castro, entered it, and he is newer to screenwriting:
December 2021
La vida es un culebrón/Life Is a Soap Opera was a Quarter-Finalist in the Wiki Screenplay Contest 
October 2021: My short play BOOK OF LIFE was published by Globe Pequot/Applause in The Best New Ten-Minute Plays 2021. 
My short play ROUGHING IT won 1st Place in its category in the William Faulkner Literary Competition:
My short play UNTETHERED won 1st Place in the same competition and category, in 2019.
August 2021:
Quarantine Players gave my play COUNTRY FRIED MURDER a virtual second production, over Zoom. Our wonderful cast was mostly based in Nashville, but also in Georgia, Pennsylvania and Virginia, and our terrific director Katy Blake was in NYC. Click and watch! 
June 2021: My recorded Zoom play/short film called What If Science Is Real? which was previously in the Irondale On Women Festival is an Official Selection in the New York Lift-Off Film Festival.
May 2021: Ensemble Theatre of Chattanooga did a fine podcast production of my one-act play BUG RESCUING, and included an interview with me, and then one with the director:
My unproduced full-length play COZY MURDER was chosen as a New Voices Finalist by Hopewell Theatre in Ohio. My unproduced full-length play GARDEN PARTY was filmed and edited by Nashville director Alyssa Borg, and is presented by Equity Library Theatre. March 2021: My unproduced full-length play OTHER HABITS had a virtual reading with Act 1 in Nashville -- so good to hear it, all the way through! 
And my unproduced full-length play COZY MURDER won a chance to have a reading with Town and Country players in Pennsylvania:
February 2021: My full-length play THE POLITICS OF FABULOUSNESS had a fine Zoom production plus talk-back with the Quarantine Players! See below!
My Zoom play/film What If Science Is Real? was in the New Media Storytelling division of the Irondale On Women Festival in Brooklyn. I'm in the film with Jack E. Chambers and Clint Alphin.
My short play THE CHILD IS THE MOTHER OF THE WOMAN was to have gone up in a 2Cents Theatre Festival in Los Angeles. My short play What's Held Back was to go up in an Act 1 festival at the Darkhorse in Nashville, directed and acted by Vanderbilt students ...
But then the pandemic came ... And theaters all over the US are postponing and canceling shows, and we all have bigger problems to worry about than pouty playwrights ... I hope people are keeping safe, and being good to each other! My short play CATCHING UP WITH JOAN OF ARC at the end of 2020 became a podcast with Broadway's Dana Steingold playing Joan, in Bret Carson's Audio Amphitheater. Below the logo for the theater is a button leading to the podcast. 
My full-length play KIMBERLY IN OVERDRIVE premiered in the OPPA! New Works Festival at On Pitch Performing Arts in Layton, Utah.
My short play BOOK OF LIFE was produced over Zoom by Open Fist Theatre Company in Los Angeles. The theme of the festival was Isolation. They did a wonderful job:
I'm very proud that my Zoom play Tourists in Dystopia and my play about two people sheltering in place called A Different Kind of Strong, plus two songs of mine, are part of the Shelter Plays project.
My plays are the lower two in the third column -- please click the link below to check them out!
Bay City Players in Michigan made my short play ASSERTIVENESS TRAINING part of a night of September Zoom readings:
My ten-minute bi-lingual play (in English and Spanish) called INTERPRETING A DREAM was included in a virtual festival.
My short play THE POE-STER was produced live on Zoom, in Writing on the Wall, presented by KDC Theatre in London. My play is about a college student whose Edgar Allan Poe poster starts talking to him. It was a fine show, and a fine production of THE POE-STER!
My unproduced one-act play WHAT WE CAST OFF, WHAT WE KEEP was singled out in Theatre in the Raw's 11th Biennial One-Act Play Writing Contest, in Canada, at the end of June:
My short play THE EMPEROR'S INTERVIEW got published in Qu Literary. It was produced in 2019 and written several years ago, which is eerie, as the characters talk about the "plague" and "pestilence" ravaging the land, and how the Emperor won't listen to the doctors and scientists about how to handle it ...
I learned, around the time I learned that this Tomo Suru festival of plays on Masculinity by Women was being postponed, that two short plays of mine have been selected for it by directors: HARD TO GET and THE OTHER WOMAN. I've never had my work chosen for a festival in Canada before. Update: Tomo Suru have also chosen my play BUG RESCUING to be in a festival of plays about Love. They plan to run their postponed festivals in 2022.
My short play UNTETHERED was produced here in Nashville by Act 1 at the Darkhorse Theatre in their One Acts Festival.
My short play TIMESHARE came in First in the Tallahassee Writers Association's 2019 - 2020 Seven Hills contest, in the 10-Minute Play category. It has been published with other winners. And my short play Private Dick was a winner in the Stage It! competition run by Bonita Springs Center for the Performing Arts, also in Florida, and those plays have also been published:
My short play PERFORMANCE ART got published online in the magazine Fleas on the Dog:
My short play BOOK OF LIFE had a reading with Theatrikos Theatre in Flagstaff, Arizona in the Northern Arizona Playwrights Showcase. It was a Finalist with the Old Library Theatre in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, for their 9th Annual One-Act Play Festival. It was produced for the first time, in California, by SkyPilot Theatre in their One Act Festival 2019, built around the theme of Future Shock.
It won the Audience Award at the Festival. It will be published by Applause Theatre and Cinema Books in The Best New Ten-Minute Plays 2021.
Here is the SkyPilot production, with Ayla Barreau and Albert Garnica, directed by Arden Haywood Smalls:
My short play WHAT'S HELD BACK premiered in Chicago in 2019 in Otherworld Theatre's Paragon Festival of SF plays:
My full-length play COUNTRY FRIED MURDER was produced in 2019 in Pennsylvania, as it won in the Full-Length Play category in the competition run by the Shawnee Playhouse. 
Here'san article about COUNTRY FRIED MURDER in the local paper:
My unproduced full-length play HALLWAY HOUSE made the Second Round in the 2019 Austin Film Festival in the play category. 
My unproduced full-length play KIMBERLY IN OVERDRIVE was a Finalist in the TCTC New Play Festival, and had a partial reading in Tyler, Texas. KIMBERLY IN OVERDRIVE also came in Third in Chaffin Barn's Clash of the Playwrights in Nashville. My short play THE OTHER WOMAN was released as a podcast by Panglossian Productions:
My short play UNTETHERED had its premiere in Lowell, Michigan with LowellArts Players, in Playbytes by Playwrights: UNTETHERED took First Prize in the William Faulkner Literary Competition in Mississippi.
Here's an interview that Jonathan Pinkerton did with me and the cast of my full-length play STOP ME IF YOU'VE HEARD THIS ONE as it opened here in Nashville at Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre: http://jhpentertainment.com/rapid-fire-20-q-stop-me-if-youve-heard-this-one-chaffins-barn-2019/?fbclid=IwAR3Z5qk2oTG_XKWm1b3TTiFc0FLTQ0mnDznKum3PPLCeN3kqyAaN3z70IPg 
My full-length musical SENATOR SCROOGE had a reading with Emerging Artists in NYC in October, 2018: newworkseries.com/new_works_series/senator-scrooge/ 
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September 2024: I am proud that Hilda Lamas Garcia, the Aretha Franklin of Latina Texas Soul, has recorded a song that I wrote by myself, "Hazy, With a Chance of Rain," and released it as a single:
March 2024: I played "My Name Is Hope" at the TSAI Songwriter Awards. It won in Category 1, and it won "Song of the Year."
My song called "My Name Is Hope" was nominated for "Song of the Year" at TSAI:
"My Name Is Hope" also got nominated in Category 1:
My song called "You" got nominated in Category 2:
I co-wrote Thad Foster's single called "In These Arms," released in February 2024.
November 2023 -- My friend Tracee Perrin featured me in a songwriter showcase on Friday, November 17th:
"The Hard Stuff," a song I co-wrote with artist Phillip Sandifer, is part of an NSAI "Top 40 Playlist" -- for the fourth quarter of 2023:
July 2023 -- Florida artist Andy Pursell has released "Me, Myself and the Tide," a song I wrote with Joe Hanson and Victoria Banks, as a single:
Filipina star Maine Mendoza released "Lost With You" as a single in June of 2021. It's a song I wrote with Jacob Westfall and Jimmy Borja. This is the video for it, with over 920,000 views on YouTube:
There are a bunch of personal "reaction" videos commenting on this video, on YouTube -- with people giving their impressions in Tagalog, so I have no idea what they're saying. There's even a three-part "Behind the Scenes"/"Making Of" video out for this video. Here is Part One:
In February 2023, my co-writer Randy Raatz created a video for our song "Vicious Circle," though it's not exactly the perfect Valentine's Day song ...
And Randy came up with this for our song "One Hundred Proof," also in February:
In January of 2023, Canadian country artist Mary Resek released her recording of my song "Quiet Man" as a single to country radio:
It's getting added to playlists ...
With the artist Phillip Sandifer, I wrote a song called "Turn This Ship Around." (The video is further down this page.) The video was nominated for a Posi Award:
A song that I wrote by myself called "My Name Is Hope" was among the song smost picked up by publishers, artists and producers when pitched at meetings of Tennessee Songwriters International in the Traditional Country category in 2021. It was chosen by members as the winner in that category.
I'm very proud to have written this song about missing and murdered Indigenous women (MMIW) with Thad Foster:
Thad Foster has released "Hell Bent and Heaven Bound" as a single. I'm proud to have written this song with Thad and Ted Russell Kamp.
Thad Foster has also released his album called Majestic. I co-wrote 11 of the 12 songs on the album with him -- all but the one by George Michael! I'm very proud to have collaborated with Thad on this project. The link to hear the songs and read our lyrics is below the album cover:
My thinking is that, since I talk about plays and films in the other column, I may as well talk about prose fiction and non-fiction in this one, along with music. I have an essay on Rod Serling and the Twilight Zone in this collection of essays:
I have an essay on teaching Jewish science fiction in another book in the same series:
Though I am not known as a chipper, perky person, generally, my solo-write song called "After the Rain" was nominated for a 2021 Posi Award: an award for positive songwriting. It was one of three nominees in the Healing category:
I submitted a recording by a demo singer in Nashville, but they wanted me to post a video of me, myself, singing the nominated song:
Jeremy Michael has released "Real Poor Condition" as a single. It's a song he wrote with me and Mark Irwin: the hit writer who co-wrote Alan Jackson's "Here in the Real World" and the song "Highway Don't Care," which Tim McGraw did with Taylor Swift and Keith Urban. Jeremy is an artist who can do cool things with his voice, almost like Roy Orbison, and we built some of that into the song. Here is the video:
In 2020 I co-wrote Phillip Sandifer's single "Turn This Ship Around": a song that talks about events during World War II, and more current ones:
I'm excited that this song has been included on the Hope Rises CD put out by Music To Life -- chosen for the compilation by some judges I really admire:
Again, I talk about plays on the other side. I talk about music here -- and books and films and other things. My YA novel Au Pair Girl, based on a suspense/thriller screenplay of mine that was optioned in Hollywood four times, was published by Itoh Books in 2012. When that press closed, they let me have the rights to my novel back, and the cover. I have now published it myself on Kindle. You can buy it on Amazon for $2.99.
Click on the button above, to see it on Amazon. Since I'm now a publisher, I went on Fiverr and found an artist to do a logo for my new company, Warp & Woof Books:
Even though this is a podcast of a play of mine, I'm putting it over here on the music side, 'cause Sex With Your Ex is a play about a woman moving to Nashville to be a songwriter, and it's built around a song. This audio version of the one-woman show was produced in the UK by the Lost Souls Monologue Project.
This is the song of mine the play is built around. The play is about ten years old, and the song is one I wrote long ago ... The play has been produced one onstage in Nashville, and once onstage in NYC.
I co-wrote nine songs in the musical comedy film Cooking For Two, shot in Hong Kong. You can now watch it on Tubi TV.
Randy Raatz has created a cool lyric video for our Raatz with Klass song "Steel Snowflakes":
And Randy has shot this romantic video for our song "My Heartbeat Will Tell You":
And he created this lovely video for our song "When You Fall Asleep":
I wrote the title cut for Hilda Lamas' album Love Me Alone with Katy Blake and Ron Reed:
Here's my song and video "What If Science Is Real?"
Commodore round at 9:00 on February 29th, 2020 with Pam Belford, Bill Flowerree and Jeremy Dean. It was fun! [Update: that was my last writers' round before the pandemic -- and, very sadly, the great Pam Belford passed away in April of 2022.]
I co-wrote "Disappear" with Adara and Jimmy Borja, and the DRYM remix was a Euro club hit.
Again with Adara and Jimmy Borja, I wrote "Can't Keep Away," and it was a hit for Eurika in the Philippines. You can still watch this lyric video if you click on it!
Kevin So has put out a fun video for "Coming Home," a song I wrote with him:
I co-wrote Thad Foster's song about his fight against cancer called "On the Ropes," and, with a film-maker friend, Thad shot a video for it:
Kevin So's album S.O.U.L. contains three songs I co-wrote. One, "This Guitar," is a song I wrote with him and Brandon Maddox, that Brandon put out on an album. Here's Kevin's version:
Here's Brandon's take on it:
Here is a nice video that Gabrielle Gross, a young artist in the Philippines, put out when she recorded a song I wrote with Jimmy Borja called "Secret."
Here's "Colors," one of my two solo-write cuts on Dance with the Dinosaurs, an album of songs for kids put out by the country band Cash Creek:
Here is a lyric video for "Wash It Away" -- a song I wrote with Jimmy Borja and Ziggy Diaz that Cole Silva in the UK released as a single in 2018.
Phillip Sandifer, a co-writer of mine in Texas, had this fun video made, with stock footage, for our song "Loose Ends":
Avon Rosales in the Philippines released "Until Now" as a single in July 2019; it's by me and Jimmy Borja. Here is the lyric video:
The horror movie He Never Died features Henry Rollins as an undead zombie cannibal with anger issues, and at one point he attacks a jukebox because some girls put on my song "Quiet Man" and he finds it annoying. (I might respond in a similar way to Black Flag.) Canadian country artist Mary Resek recorded her own version of that song:
Here is a single from Thad Foster of Arizona/California and Judy G Martin, a country artist in Spain. Thad and I co-wrote the song for them to sing.
The singer/songwriter Anthony George has released his Sir Anthony album, which contains the song "Hell" that we co-wrote:
With Simon Kirke -- the drummer from Bad Company -- and Rob Taube, I co-wrote "Wind and the Rain," which was on a recent album of Simon's:
I was proud to write "Standing Strong" with Thad Foster. Twenty West Coast country artists came together to record it, to raise money for survivors of what happened at the country music festival in Las Vegas.
To get a sense of my other cuts as a songwriter, please check out the Music page at this site, or the "video" page (which mostly has tracks, not videos) of my profile at reverbnation
With Randy Raatz of Chicago (he wrote the music and played on the tracks -- I wrote the words) I completed a collaborative rock album, with John Carroll, Shantel Adams and other cool people singing the songs. The album, naturally, is called -- Raatz with Klass Two versions of my political CD are out at CD Baby and can be previewed: Protest Songs in an Age of Trump (Unplugged) And here is the full-band version: Protest Songs in An Age of Trump My CDs Brooklyn Cowgirl and The Brooklyn Cowgirl Rides Again are also available through CD Baby. Buy individual songs or the whole album digitally -- or buy an actual, physical copy of an album, and you'll get some lovely pictures taken on the Brooklyn Bridge and in the subway, plus a booklet chock full of sparkling, zippy liner notes ... |
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