Spoken Word from Baraka to Renne Harris

This workshop will involve the craft of writing and analyzing text, the pedagogy of spoken word from oral modalities and traditions to the contemporary context in which the written text is performed and intersects with voice, movement and sound to derive at theater. Students will also work with the Creative Writing Honors class at East Palo Alto High School helping to lead discussion and writing exercises.

Marc Bamuthi Joseph

Bamuthi is an artist currently living in Oakland, California. He has entered the world of literary performance after crossing the sands of traditional theater, most notably on Broadway in the Tony Award winning The Tap Dance Kid and Stand-Up Tragedy. During that period he choreographed a series of music videos and film segments working with the esteemed Savion Glover, George Faison, and Harold Nicholas among others.
Since beginning a career in performance poetry in the Fall of 1998, Bamuthi has been San Francisco's Poetry Grand Slam winner three times, won the 1999 National Poetry Slam with Team San Francisco, and founded and continues to host "Second Sundays", the nation's largest ongoing monthly spoken word gathering. His local performances have included appearances at the Fillmore, the Bill Graham Civic Center, The Alice Arts Center, Theater Artaud, The Lorraine Hansberry Theater, The Oakland Museum, The San Francisco Arts Institute, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. He has been a featured lecturer and artist in residence at several colleges and universities including UC Berkeley, Western Washington University, The University of Illinois, Krannert Center, The University of Minnesota, The University of Alaska-Fairbanks, Stanford University and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He is a Gallard Fellow, an AmeriCorps Fellow, and a recipient of a Creative Work Fund grant. His first solo length work,, "Word Becomes Flesh," has been commissioned by the National Performance
Network.

Caroline Kuntz

Relevant Links: