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"Mac validated my social activist impulses," says Steve Colman '92, pictured outside his New York apartment. He won a Tony Award for co-writing and co-starring in Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam.
RICHARD TERMINE |
"I feel all poets should be historians," Steve Colman '92, a director, performer, writer and activist, declares from across a Greenwich Village coffee shop table. "You can't disconnect this stuff from what's going on around you."
A history major at Macalester, the scruffy, boyish-looking 36-year-old earned an M.A. in history from Case Western Reserve University and was accepted into a Ph.D. program at NYU but chose to pursue spoken-word poetry instead. "It was between microfiche and touring," he says with a sly grin. "It was not a hard decision." But history, as well as contemporary culture, current events and political issues, continues to strongly influence his art and his activism.
As a spoken-word poet, he's performed around the country and world. He was a member of the 1998 national-champion poetry slam team representing New York City's Nuyorican Poets CafŽ. He co-wrote and co-starred in the Tony Award-winning Broadway production Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam, a showcase of spoken word and poetry. His most recent endeavor: co-creating and assistant-directing the Tony Award-winning Bridge & Tunnel, a one-woman show featuring 14 different immigrant characters who have come together for a poetry slam, all played by his wife Sarah Jones, a writer and performer.
'Some people don't have the luxury of sitting around and talking about love when they're being interrogated by the FBI or don't have health care.' |
"Mac is a huge part of my career," Colman says when asked how it all started. "It validated my social activist impulses, refined my ideas--and I performed there." The Englewood, N.J., native hadn't discovered how to merge his seemingly disparate interests in rap, poetry, history, social issues and activism until he saw Jones perform "Your Revolution," a poem confronting the over-sexualized portrayal of women in rap lyrics. "I decided that the best way for me to make the world a better place was to use...language and communicate with the audience through art," he says.
Inspired, Colman moved to New York City in 1997 and haunted the spoken-word scene. He started performing and garnering acclaim, crafting poems such as "Terrorist Threat," his ode to the paranoid post-9/11 atmosphere. He used his poetry to talk about other issues such as health care, poverty, homelessness and race in a powerful yet playful way that people would not only listen to but enjoy--and become motivated by.
To further his activist impulses, Colman has performed his work at benefits, reading poetry for the women's rights group Equality Now and anti-war protest coalition United for Peace and Justice.
Colman stopped performing to work on Bridge & Tunnel, which ran on Broadway from February to August 2006. He is currently developing a one-man show with spoken-word poetry, stories and reflections culled from his body of work. "I would rather be talking about modern love or relationships or family or history," he says, "but some people don't have the luxury of sitting around and talking about love when they're being interrogated by the FBI or don't have health care.
"All the things I've been writing about for the last 10 years are not only still issues," he continues, "but issues that still really need to be talked about."
Jenny Sherman '98 |
