Artist
Marc Bamuthi Joseph
Via Oakland, CA, USA
Marc Bamuthi Joseph is one of America’s vital voices in performance, arts education, and artistic curation. In fall 2007, he appeared on the cover of Smithsonian magazine after being named one of America’s Top Young Innovators in the Arts and Sciences. He is the artistic director of the seven-part HBO documentary Russell Simmons presents Brave New Voices and an inaugural recipient of the United States Artists Rockefeller Fellowship, which annually recognizes 50 of the country’s “greatest living artists.”
Joseph is the 2011 Alpert Award winner in Theater, and in April 2012, he was one of 21 artists to be named to the inaugural class of Doris Duke Artists. His evening-length work red black and GREEN:a blues was nominated for a 2013 Bessie Award for “Outstanding Production (of a work stretching the boundaries of a traditional form).” Joseph’s next piece in this artistic vein, /peh-LO-tah/, is a Balinese-style shadow play that examines global economies and sexual identities through the lens of the World Cup.
Joseph is the founding Program Director of the exemplary non-profit Youth Speaks, and is a co-founder of Life is Living, a national series of one-day festivals designed to activate under-resourced parks and affirm peaceful urban life through hip-hop, the arts and focused environmental action. Joseph is currently completing new works for the Philadelphia Opera and South Coast Repertory Theater while serving as Director of Performing Arts at Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco.
