Performing Art – New Orleans

I go by the name “A Scribe Called Quess?” I’m a poet, educator, actor, playwright, and occasional rapper/MC in that order… sorta. I’m a man of words in general and social justice, specifically. I’m a 2-time national slam poetry championship title winner. My accomplishments in slam poetry have earned me honors from the Mayor of New Orleans as well as from City Council. I’m a two-time Slam New Orleans Semi-Finals Slam winner and New Orleans Museum of Art Slam Champion. I realized I loved writing when I was 6. My teacher gave me an assignment to write a few sentences and it turned into a 10-sentence paragraph. I found my voice as a young Brooklyn boy somewhere between Winnie the Pooh and New Jack City, Peter Pan and Do the Right Thing, Chronicles of Narnia and Black Boy. Then I got older and hip-hop happened. My dad put me on to Public Enemy, A Tribe Called Quest. And that pretty much did it. While ever evolving, my foundation is somewhere between either of those groups’ aesthetics: activism and fantasy, blunt black urban reality and surrealism. I now find my passion most fulfilled bringing all the wanderings of my cloudy imagination to the ground where they’re most needed. With the personal as a platform for the political and vice versa, I render my own experiences as an educator, activist, and black man in America, as a palette to create healing art from. I write to charge and to challenge, to lift and inspire, to find myself, and lose myself along the way, and enjoy the ride. I welcome you to join me.