Beau Sia and Staceyann Chin are on Def Poetry Jam's Broadway
Productions (see below for their bio and reviews)
http://www.defpoetryjamnyc.com/

-------

Russell Simmons
Def Poetry Jam on Broadway
http://www.talkinbroadway.com/world/DefPoetryJam.html
http://www.defpoetryjamnyc.com/def2.html

Theatre Review by Matthew Murray - November 14, 2002
Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam on Broadway Conceived by Stan Lathan
and Russell Simmons. Poets: Beau Sia, Black Ice, Staceyann Chin,
Steve Colman, Mayda Del Valle, Georgia Me, Suheir Hammad, Lemon
Poetri.
DJ: Tendaji.
Set design by Bruce Ryan.
Costume design by Paul Tazewell. Lighting design by Yael Lubetzky.
Sound design by Elton P.
Halley. Directed by Stan Lathan.
Theatre: Longacre Theatre, 220 West 48th Street
Running time: 2 hours including one 15 minute intermission
Audience: May be inappropriate for 11 and under. (Strong Language)
Children under 4 are not permitted in the theater.
Schedule: Tuesday through Friday at 8 PM.
Saturday at 5 PM and 9 PM.
Sunday at 3 PM and 7 PM.
Ticket prices: $65, $45, $25. A $1.25 Facilities Fee will be added to
the price of each ticket.
Tickets: Tele-Charge
Rush Tickets: Student Rush tickets are $15. Available on the day of
performance only from the Box Office. 2 tickets per valid Student ID.
Subject to availability.


A revolution is being undertaken at the Longacre Theatre, and it's
being led by Russell Simmons and Stan Lathan. The two men behind Def
Poetry Jam on Broadway are dedicated to proving that poetry needn't
be ancient or stodgy, but that it can still prove driving and
inspiring to the current generation.

To get this message out and get it living onstage (after successfully
promoting the concept on HBO), they have assembled a troupe of nine
slam poets and one DJ intent on bringing their energy and enthusiasm
to live audiences under Lathan's direction. But is Broadway ready for
them? And are they ready for Broadway?

The audience at the performance I attended represented a healthy
cross-section of the city - older and younger men and women of every
racial and ethnic background imaginable. Bringing such disparate
groups of people together under one roof is a big part of what Def
Poetry Jam on Broadway is about. Like the audience, the cast is as
diverse as New York (and America) itself. Beau Sia, Black Ice,
Staceyann Chin, Steve Colman, Mayda Del Valle, Georgia Me, Suheir
Hammad, Lemon, and Poetri share some traits: they all hail from
vastly different backgrounds, they all have unique voices, and
they're all enormously talented poets, capable of bringing new
artistic and linguistic perspectives to a wide array of topics.

The poets' recitations do tend to revolve around certain themes. The
first set of poems is about identity, the second series finds each of
the cast members paying tribute to a specific person or influence,
and the third tackles love. The individual subject matter and
presentation of the poems can vary greatly.

Georgia Me discusses the difficulties in loving yourself despite your
appetite in her moving "Full Figured Woman," while later on, Poetri
tips his hat to his lover and tormentor, "Krispy Kreme." The poems
are equally as likely to be humorous ("Shine," Lemon's recounting of
the black stoker who escaped from the Titanic) as they are thoughtful
("She," Steve Colman's recounting of the life of a female rapper that
instructs more about dreams lost and abandoned than it does about
rap), as timeless (Poetri's "Money") as they are timely
(Suheir's "Mike Check," about the horrors she faces when passing
through airports).

The poets all make sure you learn something and are entertained from
beginning to end, so on one level (perhaps the most important one),
they're a great success. But, there's an underlying sense of
uneasiness about the proceedings. A couple of problems prevent the
sparks onstage from starting a fire.

First, though the show's DJ (Tendaji), at the beginning of the show,
promises the audience a party, the music he's onstage to provide is
used sparingly, only a few minutes as a warm-up at the beginning, a
little at the start of the second act, and then snippets of songs in
between the poets' presentations. The music doesn't detract from the
poets, but it seldom supports them; it's a lot of trouble for little
payoff.

More significantly, the lack of this kind of stage experience on the
part of the performers, especially in this type of venue, doesn't
help. None of the poets have the traditional theatre charisma needed
to prevent their talent and energy from evaporating in the theatre
atmosphere; what might work on television does not necessarily work
onstage.

The show's amplification further distances the performers'
bodies from their voices, not helping them establish the emotional
connection with their audience they might in a more intimate venue;
that the poets are reduced to standing onstage in front of Bruce
Ryan's cheesily colorful collection of walls and neighborhood stoops
strikes a similarly untrue chord.

More often than not, the show doesn't work as both theatre and slam
poetry. But when three poems near the middle of the first act are
recited by multiple poets, it becomes clear that the forum may be
used as theatre-style communication.

This combination and contrast of voices keeps things fresh and
surprising, and it's difficult not to wish the poets would interact
with each other more often.

The second act's first poem is recited by all the show's women, but
the only comparable moment comes at the end when the poets all gather
onstage to listen to, and applaud, everyone else's work and then
assemble in a line to recite "I Write America," separately and
together, the contribution each makes - or does not make - to the
country in which they live.

This cacophony of voices is what makes Def Poetry Jam most exciting,
and when it breaks free of its traditional mold to embrace true
theatrical communication, it doesn't happen a moment too soon.

While the show's audience was usually politely appreciative,
occasionally one or two audience members would be unabashedly vocal
about how they believed or agreed with a certain sentiment, shouting
out their approval for all to hear.

The most visceral of reactions helped to show that Def Poetry Jam is
not out of place on Broadway, but the show refuses to embrace its new
home as fully as it might.

Still, when it's at its best, Def Poetry Jam exists at once in both
the world of mainstream theatre and popular performance, once again
bringing together two things that could hardly be more different,
their commonalities to be experienced by all.


---------


November 10, 2002, New York Times
A New Platform for the New Poets

By JON PARELES

"I DON'T know anything about Broadway," says Russell Simmons, the
hip-hop mogul and C.E.O. of Rush Communications, as he waves a
visitor into the Longacre Theater.

It's time for the last run-through before New York previews begin
of "Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam on Broadway." Dressed in white
Phat Farm Classic running shoes, ripped patchwork jeans, orange
sweater and a baseball cap he keeps turning backward, he doesn't look
like a theater V.I.P. He is getting his Broadway education on the
job - as the show's lead producer.

While Mr. Simmons settles into a back-row seat, a disc jockey,
Tendaji, plays bits of rhythm-and-blues and hip-hop and warms up the
few spectators like a club disc jockey, promising "the dopest poets of
our generation."

Soon, nine poets muster onstage to make terse mission statements. "I
wanna raise poems like my kids/Keep them from jail bids,/ Pessimism
and negativity," says Black Ice, an African-American from
Philadelphia.

"I wanna be read, loved, memorized,/ I wanna be a poem that changes
lives," says Suheir Hammad, a Palestinian-American from Brooklyn.

"I want all poems to be about me," says Beau Sia, a Chinese-American
from Oklahoma City.

From there, each poet steps forward for solo recitations and a few
group poems. The performance is in the words and in the way they can
stir up an audience or create a rapt silence. It was polished in a
six-week San Francisco run this summer.

"The audiences that we have had so far are always surprised by where
the show takes them," Ms. Hammad said. "You laugh and you're
challenged and you're angered and you're uplifted, and you don't
often get that in two hours in a theater."

"Def Poetry Jam" brings to Broadway both the ancient traditions of
bards and griots and the more recent resurgence of spoken-word
performance, which was spurred by the rhymes of hip-hop and has taken
on its own momentum since the 1980's.

Poets have turned into performers, reciting work that can be
adamantly political, deeply personal, funny and unflinching, often in
quick succession. For the first time on Broadway, poetry with hip-hop
roots is at centerstage.

Writing poetry may once have been the outlet for a few sensitive high
school students. But now, Mr. Simmons believes, it is a majority
pursuit. "If I'm in a high school in the ghetto right now," he says,
"and I ask, `Who writes poetry?,' or `How many of you have a book of
rhymes?,' 80 percent of the class raises their hands."

Mr. Simmons has made a career of transforming urban oral traditions
into mainstream entertainment. "I don't pretend to discover ideas,"
he said. "By the time I get hold of something, it's already hot.

I bring it to HBO, or Hollywood, or records, and it may be the first
time that people have heard it outside of the core, but these people
are already cultural heroes in their community. What feels good to me
is pretty commercial by the time I like it, and I believe poetry's
time has come."

He does have a way of getting the outside world to pay attention. He
started out managing the Queens hip-hop group Run-D.M.C.; his brother
Joey Simmons is the rapper Run. He started the Def Jam label,
which put out albums by L. L. Cool J.,

Public Enemy and the Beastie Boys, and in the mid-1990's he began
producing "Russell Simmons's Def Comedy Jam" for HBO, giving national
exposure to Martin Lawrence, Bernie Mac, Cedric the Entertainer and
other African- American comics.

As the 1990's ended, Mr. Simmons grew interested in the spoken-word
performers who were making guest appearances on hip-hop albums and
working a national circuit of cafes, colleges and competitions
called poetry slams.

With the director Stan Lathan, who was the executive producer of "Def
Comedy Jam" on television, he began pitching HBO on a poetry series,
and at the end of 2001, "Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry" found
an enthusiastic audience in a late-night slot. The Broadway version,
which Mr. Lathan is also directing, includes some of the HBO series'
most vivid performers.

While other Broadway theaters are filled with "Les Misérables,"
revivals of old musicals and revues based on familiar songs, "Def
Poetry Jam" is up to the minute. Run-D.M.C.'s disc jockey, Jam Master
Jay (Jason Mizell), was murdered on Oct. 30 as previews for "Def
Poetry Jam" began.

Within a day, Black Ice and the Jamaican poet Staceyann Chin began
collaborating on a poem about the shooting and other untimely deaths.
It will very likely be part of the show by the time it officially
opens on Thursday. "This show is not going to be engraved in stone,"
Mr. Lathan said. "The poems are constantly being updated."

He added: "There are so many shows I've seen, not just in theater but
even more in television, that start out with the hook `This is
telling it like it is,' " Mr. Lathan said. "But in the translation
from the original concept to the stage or the screen it gets diluted.
With the poets, my philosophy is, `Let's put it up there, let's find
the best people to perform it and let's get out of their way.' "

The poets are all in their 20's and early 30's. "We want to open this
up to the traditional theater audience," Ms. Hammad said. "They may
be worried that they don't relate to the hip-hop generation, but
they're raising the hip-hop generation." (Ticket prices after the
opening will range from $25 to $65.)

The performers also include Mayda Del Valle, from Chicago; Georgia
Me, from Atlanta; Poetri, from Michigan; Steve Colman, from New
Jersey; and Lemon, from Brooklyn. "Poets who have been writing
and performing for most of their lives have not had this
opportunity,"

Ms. Hammad said. "We're responsible to our craft and our peers and to
America, to show them that this is what poets have been doing since
Walt Whitman, working and experiencing and incorporating different
forms of American English."

Mr. Simmons insisted that the diversity of the lineup was accidental,
a matter of choosing the best performers for the show. But the poets
are not shy about ethnic and sexual roles, whether it's Ms. Chin
describing herself as a "lipstick lesbian" or Mr. Sia promising an
"Asian invasion": "You asked for a global economy/ Well so sorry/ If
it blows up in your face . . . "

Some of the poets are college graduates; others are self-taught.
Black Ice recorded a consciousness-raising hip-hop single when he was
16 and earned a living for 10 years as a barber while writing poetry.

"That was my college years, working in the barbershop," he said.
"Because that gave me perspective on what I would have to do to
create some change, to create some conversation about change. My
performance pieces are like sermons. I don't consider myself a poet,
I'm a vessel. God uses me to get messages through that he needs to
get to people."

"Def Poetry Jam" is loosely organized into four segments: identity,
memories, love and a final message. In the course of the performance,
the poets address stereotypes, love, music, politics, family, food,
money and the meaning of America.

Poetri denounces Krispy Kreme donuts as a plot "started to keep the
black man down and round"; Lemon and Ms. Valle share a tribute to
Tito Puente. Georgia Me talks back to an abusive lover; Mr. Colman
indicts right-wing power as the real "terrorist threat."

It has been a generation since a Broadway production revolved around
poetry. In 1976, Ntozake Shange's "For Colored Girls Who Have
Considered Suicide/ When the Rainbow Is Enuf" moved uptown from the
Public Theater. "For Colored Girls" was called a "choreopoem," with
actresses performing Ms. Shange's tough-minded monologues about
women's lives.

It introduced Broadway audiences to a rhetorical style that drew on
gospel oratory, jazz and raw street talk, and its repercussions can
be heard on recent albums by Jill Scott (a singer as well as a
performing poet), Saul Williams and Ursula Rucker. (In 1995, the poet
Reg E. Gaines wrote the text for "Bring In da Noise/ Bring In da
Funk," though his contribution was upstaged by dance and music.)

The difference between "For Colored Girls" and "Def Poetry Jam" is
that this time the performers are speaking their own words. "I try to
keep it as spontaneous as possible," Mr. Lathan said. "We try not to
overrehearse. The key is that the poets come out and there's honesty.
They try to convey what they felt as they wrote the poem and what it
does to them now."

They're not exactly introverts. In the hip-hop era, poetry has found
a place on the stage as well as the page. Poetry slams began in
Chicago in the 1980's as mock-Olympics for poetry, and soon turned
serious, with local teams and national championships. As each poet
delivered one poem per round, slams worked like radio or MTV; if the
current act wasn't entertaining, the next would be on in minutes.

New York's magnet for poetry performance was the Nuyorican Poets
Cafe, which Bob Holman opened in the East Village in 1989. Most of
the "Def Poetry Jam" poets have appeared on its small stage. "It
was just at the moment when multiculturalism was picking up steam as
an academic subject," said Mr. Holman, who now runs the Bowery Poetry
Club. "You could study it in schools and read about it or go
down to the cafe and live it."

The Lollapalooza Festival of alternative rock included a stage for
spoken-word performers, and in 1993, MTV produced a segment of its
"Unplugged" series featuring poets. Mr. Sia was a teenager in
Oklahoma City when he saw the MTV show and decided to try poetry.
When Mr. Sia moved to New York City, Mr. Holman said, he came to the
Nuyorican Poets Cafe with 400 pages of his own poetry.

"There are still poets who come out of the ether with 400-page
manuscripts," Mr. Holman said. "But with the slams, there are more
that have two or three that are crowd pleasers, and they can ride
them."

In "Def Poetry Jam," the delivery can be conversational or
declamatory, motor-mouthed or calmly intense. The poets use the
cadences of rapping, Jamaican toasting, preaching and comedy. They
buttonhole the audience, all but demanding a response. It's a style
that most of the performers have honed on the slam circuit, where the
competition is "tooth and nail," Mr. Sia said.

"The way the eye reads the page and the ear hears the words is such a
different thing," Mr. Sia added. "It's not about the line breaks,
it's about being coherent and being understood."

Part of the process of creating "Def Poetry Jam on Broadway" was to
turn competitors into an ensemble and to make a place for intimate
poems as well as show-stoppers, said Mr. Lathan: "They had to learn
that it wasn't about outdoing the guy before you. We wanted to keep
this thing as a journey and not a race."

Black Ice said: "My performance has shot up so much since we've been
a team. Some people like competition, but my mission in this lifetime
is to spread the truth. And when we have a competition of truth, it
makes no sense that my truth is truer than yours. Truth can't be
conquered, it can only be built upon. And we're dropping truth."

-

http://www.beausia.com/bio.html
Beau Sia didn't always know that he would be a poet. Raised in
Oklahoma City, he spent most of his childhood hiding from identity
issues that he didn't know existed. Being Chinese-American, yet
attending strictly Filipino-American functions, added to the
confusion instilled by his cultural diversity lacking education. His
only outlet was the arts. What he couldn't vent through being on the
swim team, he released in painting, music, and dance. It was only
after a chance viewing of spoken word on MTV that he discovered
writing.
A tool which gave words to his catharsis, named his demons, and
resolved his inner teen angst conflicts, Beau used writing to deal
with most of his teenage frustrations. Soon, he felt these things he
wrote had to be shared, which led him to the only open mic in
Oklahoma City. After two years of perfecting both the written and
performance aspect of his work, he decided to move to New York and
test his craft. He applied and was accepted into NYU's Tisch School
of The Arts Dramatic Writing Program.

In New York, Beau immediately jumped into the fire and performed his
poetry at the world famous Nuyorican Poet's Cafe, where he won poetry
slam after poetry slam. This would lead to him becoming a member of
the 1996 Nuyorican Poet's Cafe NPS (National Poetry Slam) team, which
would place 3rd in the finals at the National Poetry Slam and later
be featured in the documentary film about poetry slams, Slamnation.
With this strong entrance into the world of poetry slams, Beau
continued to be on five NPS teams, four of which went on to the
finals, and two of which won NPS championships. His most recent NPS
accomplishment being placing 2nd in the individual competition at the
2001 NPS in Seattle.

Though he enjoys the NPS, he prefers to share a larger body of his
work when on stage, showing both range of content and style. This
desire has manifested itself into tours throughout Europe and the
United States. Right now, his focus has been in touring the college
circuit. An avid participant in NACA ( National Association for
Campus Activities) conferences, this honor has allowed him to perform
at such prestigious universities as Harvard, Notre Dame, Duke, and
Columbia.

Beau's poetry isn't limited to live performance, though. Over the
years his work has found itself in books, on CD, and on television.
Author of the poetry book A Night Without Armor II: The Revenge as
well as the spoken word CD's Attack! Attack! Go! and Dope and Wack,
his work also appears in numerous anthologies on both CD and in book
format, most recently, Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam.

A featured role in the award-winning film Slam wasn't the end of
seeing Beau attempt acting. This year he was awarded the Creative
Work Fund grant in San Francisco and will be performing a full length
theatrical piece along with three other artists in Sept 2002. His
poetry has also appeared in front of the camera since Slamnation,
most notably his featured performances during the 2000 ESPN X-Games
and also for the new HBO show Russell Simmons' Def Poetry.

The television appearances and NPS championships are not the body of
Beau Sia's work, though. Honored to have such accomplishments, the
true body of his work is his poetry. So, when he is able to, he
reaches out to the two communities in which he would've liked support
as a teenager, being involved with the Asian-American Writer's
Workshop and Youthspeaks, a non-profit dedicated to developing the
writing and performance of teenagers. He has taught workshops at both
institutions and has also helped to nurture and curate the only Asian-
American open mic series in NYC, (re)collection. This year, he has
also been awarded the California Arts Council Writer-In-Residence
grant at the Youthspeaks Literary Arts Center in San Francisco, where
he plans on being a lasting positive influence to the youth there.

A boy who has fueled his life with writing and vice versa, Beau Sia
has begun making a career for himself as a poet. His passion and love
aren't about his career choices or his status in the world. He was
and always will be the person who loves to write, needs to write,
because without it he wouldn't be Beau Sia. It's that simple. And in
his unpredictable life, his only plan for the future will be to
constantly explore and challenge the person he is, break the
expectations of him as an Asian-American, as an artist, and as a man.
He hopes that the world whom he shares his work with will follow him
on this journey, but if that's not the case, he'll still be working
on his craft. It's who he is.


-



http://www.staceyannchin.com/bio.html
Staceyann Chin is a working artist. A resident of New York City and a
Jamaican National, she has been a practicing poet since 1998. From
the rousing cheers of the Nuyorican Poets' Cafe to one-woman shows
Off- Broadway to poetry workshops in Denmark and London, Chin credits
the long list of "things she has done" to her grandmother's hard-
working history and the pain of her mother's absence.

NYU, Pace, Willamette, Holy Cross, Harvard, Cornell, University of
Illinois, University of New Hampshire, University of Miami,
University of California at San Diego, Boston University, Grinnell
College, these are only few of the "institutes of higher education"
at which she has shared the stories surrounding her coming.

Chin was the winner of the 1999 Chicago People of Color Slam; first
runner- up in the 1999 Outright Poetry Slam; winner of the 1998
Lambda Poetry Slam; a finalist in the 1999 Nuyorican Grand Slam;
winner of the 1998 and 2000 Slam This!; and winner of WORD: The First
Slam for Television. She has also been featured by cable access
programs in Brooklyn and Manhattan as well as many local radio
stations including, WHCR and WBAI. The Joseph Pap Public Theatre has
featured this young poet on more than one occasion, and Staceyann has
enjoyed great success internationally, with much lauded performances
in London, Denmark, Germany, and New York's own Central Park- Summer
Stage.

In 1999, Staceyann took the American Amazon Slam title in Aarhus,
Denmark. Denmark so loved the young writer on her American Amazon
Tour that her personal history, photo and work graced the cover of
the national Newspaper The Politiken as well as the controversial,
and spicy, Ekstra Bladet. Since then, many more Danish Newspapers
have voiced their opinion of the poet from Montego Bay, Jamaica: The
Information, Retorik Magasinet, and Berlingske.

Various American publications, including the magazines A, Everybody,
Mosaic, Curve, Venus, The New York Foundation for the Arts' (NYFA's)
FYI, and Jane, as well as the newspapers, the New York Newsday, The
Village Voice, and Drum Voices have featured Staceyann. The myriad of
journals and Newsletters in which her work has appeared also include,
The Shades Newsletter, GMAD magazine, the New York Blade, The
Monsoon, and the Black women's magazine, Personal Personals.

Her individual performances warranted her work being published in the
New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Pittsburgh Daily. Her
work was also featured on "60 Minutes." Her poems can be found in her
first chapbook, Wildcat Woman, as well as in the one she now carries
on her back, Stories Surrounding My Coming, as well the anthologies,
Skyscrapers, Taxis and Tampons (out-of-print), Poetry Slam, and most
recently, Role Call.

"Hands Afire", Staceyann's first one-woman show ran for ten weeks at
the Bleecker Theater in the Summer of 2000. The same Off-Broadway
Theater welcomed the 2nd Show, "UNSPEAKABLE THINGS" in the summer of
2001 before she took it to Copenhagen for a week long run. Next year,
London, Helsinki, and Norway are in the pipelines for the show.
Chin has also been the subject of on-screen ventures. The film
Staceyann Chin was released in theaters in Denmark in 2001. It was
also aired on the Danish National Television station. Between the
Lines, a documentary that explores the notion of being Asian and
woman and writer, is the latest to feature Staceyann.

In 2002, Staceyann was nominated for the Rolex Mentor and Protege Art
Initiative where she was considered as a possible protege for Toni
Morrison.

Right now she is looking forward to the airing of a performance she
did on HBO's Def Poetry Jam. She is rehearsing, traveling, and
fighting for time to work on a collection of her own works, her much-
anticipated, many-storied memoir, and room to breathe.