She is best known for designing costumes for a wide range of theater and musical productions, including Charles Fuller's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama A Soldier's Play and the 1976 stage adaptation of Ntozake Shange's book for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf.
[2] She designed costumes for broadway productions of for colored girls..., A Raisin in the Sun, Porgy and Bess, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Joe Turner's Come and Gone.
She won the Obie Award her for her World War II uniforms for Charles Fuller's Pulitzer Prize winning drama "A Soldier's Play.
[11] In the 2010 edition of Ntozake Shange's book, for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf, the author describes Dearing's costumes in the book's 1976-78 theater adaptation: The fluid dresses, designed by the late Judy Dearing, took on colors from the set design, imbuing each lady with a persona and each persona with a unique deific principle marking the journey of womanhood.
Each poem fell into its rightful place, a rainbow of colors, shapes, and timbres of voice, my solo instrument blossoming into a cosmic chamber ensemble.