Marc Bamuthi Joseph is a National Poetry Slam champion, Broadway veteran, featured artist on the past two seasons of Russell Simmons' Def Poetry on HBO and a recipient of 2002 and 2004 National Performance Network Creation commissions. He was also recently named a USA Rockefeller Fellow in Theater Arts.

Originally from New York City and currently living in Oakland, California, this acclaimed arts activist recently returned from Tokyo where he was presented during the 1st International Spoken Word Festival and Santiago de Cuba where he joined the legendary Katherine Dunham as a part of the CubaNola Collective.

Bamuthi 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." His evening-length work "Word Becomes Flesh" represents the completion of his third play, having already staged "De/Cipher" (Theater Artaud and Yerba Buena Center, 2001) and "No Man's Land"(ODC, 2002). "Word Becomes Flesh" has found a home in the seasons of Seattle's On The Boards, Houston's Diverse Works, Washington, D.C.'s Dance Place and New York's Dance Theater Workshop among other national venues.

His work has been described as everything from "electrifying" (The Houston Chronicle), to "ever-elegant" (The Washington Post) and has compelled the Seattle Times to name him their "cutting edge performer of the year" for 2003. In their review of "Word Becomes Flesh," the New York Times declared his work to be "eloquent. . .seamless. . .and remarkable."

Bamuthi's performance schedule has carried him from dance apprenticeships in Senegal to teaching fellowships in Bosnia. His proudest work has been with the organization Youth Speaks where he mentors 13-19 year old writers and curates the Living Word Festival for Literary Arts. He recently served as an IDA resident artist in Stanford University's Drama Department, teaching Spoken Word and Community Action.

Among his recent projects: "Scourge," which reflects on the plight of Haiti in the post-colonial New World, and was developed while Bamuthi was a Phyllis Wattis Artist-in-Residence at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. Collaborators for "Scourge" included renowned choreographer Rennie Harris, Grammy-nominated composer John Santos, dramaturg Roberta Uno, and director Kamilah Forbes of the New York City Hip Hop Theater Festival.

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 "Second Sundays," the nation's first monthly spoken word gathering to generate audiences of 500+. His local work recently earned him a GOLDIE award from the San Francisco Bay Guardian, one of only seven awards given per year by the staff of the Bay Area's largest independent weekly.

Nationally, he has been a featured lecturer and performance artist at more than one hundred colleges and universities including UC Berkeley, NYU, Brown University, the University of Michigan, Bates College, Stanford University and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

He has done several performances with the current stars of the Spoken Word and music scene including: Ben Harper, De La Soul, The Roots, Bonnie Raitt, Saul Williams, Cody Chestnutt, Beau Sia, Blackalicious, Will Power, Jill Scott, Mos Def, Sarah Jones, Sonia Sanchez, Gil Scott Heron, The Last Poets, Amiri Baraka, Roger Bonair-Agard, Ishle Yi Park, Danny Hoch and many others. In addition, he's released a spoken word CD, "Seeking," worked with Linkin Park's Joe Hahn for MTV, and performs on the CD "185 Progress Drive" (Alternative Tentacles Records: 2000) with Assata Shakur, Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Bob Marley, Michael Franti, I was Born with Two Tongues and other hip hop and spoken word artists.

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Word Becomes Flesh DVD Trailer Marc Bamuthi Joseph

Word Becomes Flesh (WBF) is a fluid evening length choreopoem, the latest in a long tradition of narrative verse plays whose contributors range from Shakespeare to Ntozake Shange. Presented as a series of performed letters to his unborn son, the piece uses poetry, dance, live music and visual art to document nine months of pregnancy from a young single father's perspective. Unfortunately, our current social condition is such that a man might be ridiculed for walking out on a family, but is not socially condemned for it. While women continue to fight for their right to make choices about their bodies, the elements of patriarchy and male privilege give a man the social right to choose domestic absenteeism, refraining from offering either emotional or financial support. WBF critically, lyrically, and choreographically examines this phenomenon. In the process we confront the intersection of the physical reality and mythology of the black male body from the cotton field to the athletic field to the digital plantation and all spaces in between. Though it is performed as a solo work by National Poetry Slam Champion Marc Bamuthi Joseph, the fullest breadth of the work is the process of collaboration between the poet and the primary partners on the piece, dancer/choreographer Adia Whittaker, composers Paris King, Sekou Gibson, and Ajayi Jackson and visual artists eesuu and Traci Bartlow Bamuthi is hailed by many as the Bay Area's most passionate and engaging spoken word performer, in large part because of his ability to re-define the parameters of the spoken word by punctuating his language with directed and technically proficient dance. Word Becomes Flesh fully showcases the unique crossroads of searing politics, theology, poetry, photography and endless avenues of Black dance, including Tap, Modern, Hip Hop Movement and West African Dance.

 

 

 

 

Marc Bamuthi Joseph of The Living Word Project was at Iowa City's West High School presenting his unique blend of poetry, choreography, and story-telling last week.