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Marc Bamuthi Joseph in the break/s. Photo by Bethanie Hines. Marc Bamuthi Joseph in the break/s. Photo by Bethanie Hines. Marc Bamuthi Joseph in the break/s. Photo by Bethanie Hines. Marc Bamuthi Joseph in the break/s. Photo by Bethanie Hines.

Marc Bamuthi Joseph/The Living Word Project

National Poetry Slam champion, Broadway veteran, GOLDIE award winner, featured artist on Russell Simmons' Def Poetry on HBO and inaugural recipient of the United States Artists Rockefeller Fellowship, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, originally from NYC, is an artist and activist currently living in Oakland, California. In 2007, Bamuthi graced the cover of Smithsonian Magazine after being named one of America’s Top Young Innovators in the Arts and Sciences.

He 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 works have been presented throughout the United States and Europe and include Word Becomes Flesh, Scourge, De/Cipher and No Man's Land. His performances have been described as everything from “electrifying” (The Houston Chronicle), to “ever-elegant” (The Washington Post) and have compelled The Seattle Times to name him their “cutting edge performer of the year” for 2003. In their recent review of Word Becomes Flesh, the New York Times declared his work to be “eloquent. . .seamless. . .and remarkable” and The Chicago Tribune named it the Best Solo Show of 2006.

Bamuthi has been a featured lecturer and performance artist at more than one hundred colleges and universities including UC Berkeley, New York University, Brown University, The University of Michigan, Bates College, Stanford University and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He recently served as an IDA resident artist in Stanford University’s Drama Department, teaching Spoken Word and Community Action. the break/s was developed while completing the prestigious Arts Institute Fellowship at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

His critical writing is currently featured in Jeff Chang’s Total Chaos and his first non-fiction book, Line Breaks: A Source Guide to Hip Hop Theater will be published by The University of Wisconsin Press in 2008. A resident at ODC Theater and Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco, Bamuthi’s proudest work has been with Youth Speaks where he mentors 13-19 year old writers and curates the Living Word Festival for Literary Arts.