Ten poets in Dr Brown’s Traveling Poetry Show return to Jimmy Tingle’s Off Broadway Theater to perform their original poetry from all over the room for an hour of non-stop melding of words and feelings. Here’s your chance to get a National Poetry Month hit of the best performance poetry you are likely to see on stage anywhere, and to get copies of their books. This is interactive poetry that aims to make you respond to childhood memories, colorful characters, social injustice, chemistry and dentistry.
As Jimmy says, “The voices are so unique.”
For example: “What is so precious about one small bird?”
“The tongue exaggerates everything.”
“I could be Donald Rumsfeld.”
“How truly alive we are.”
“I just come back every now and then to see if you’re keeping the faith.”
Dr Brown’s Traveling Poetry Show was a big hit with our audience and a great contribution to Boston and the event! --Gina Mullen, Production Director, Boston’s First Night
The Boston Poetry Slam presents an all-star no-holds-barred competition for no money, no prize, and all the glory the winner can carry home. Six local poets, selected from Boston's thriving slam community, will compete for the attention of the audience and the Olympic-style scores of randomly selected judges. Come cheer, laugh, snap, cry, and heckle as slammers pull out all the lyrical stops in an effort to be the last poet standing.
This portion of the show will be hosted by Simone Beaubien, SlamMaster of the Boston Poetry Slam, four-time National Poetry Slam competitor, and MC for the 2007 Individual World Poetry Slam Finals in Vancouver, B.C.
Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear When poems were poetic, and men and women were… well…whatever they wanted to be…
See and hear the chemistry poet, the marquis de monster, takeout boy, dude, the woman with the chainsaw, and other shortcut specialists.
Meet southern ladies, Vermont birders, lawn re-decorators, bell jar survivors and dental techs. Listen to rattling bones, the anger of flowers, real tears for real fears, and age against the machine.
No, we’re not all young hip New York poets. We don’t care much for Krispy Kreme donuts, so we don’t write about them. Our poetic education began before the sarcastic zingers of the sitcoms. Ours is the stuff of poetry—people in trouble in a land of huge hearts, the little things of life that cannot be separated from your feelings, passion, love, and irony. We will make you cry, but it will be over the life-threatening experiences people share.
Laughs? Sure. Visit the church of the Jesus of Ugly. Watch a poet morph into a film director. Listen to a harried homeowner whack a mouse with a shovel and sing. See two stoned drivers talk their way out of a back yard in Newton.
Following the success of Def Poetry Jam on HBO and Broadway, fourteen successful years of our own slams and shows in Boston, eight months of shows at Jimmy Tingle's Off Broadway Theater, and a continuing upsurge in the life of poetry on stage, Doctor Brown's Traveling Poetry Show, brings together most of the fifteen-member ensemble about as various as poets can be. Different poets perform each show, including occasional out-of-towners.
Directed by professor and poet Michael Brown, the troupe includes individual and collaborative poems by chemistry specialist Mala Radhakrishnan, madman Ryk McIntyre, reading advocate Valerie Lawson, the elusive Jeff Taylor, wry raconteur Simone Beaubien, musician and salesman Alex Charalambides, lyrical Laura Yan, teacher Douglas Bishop, and, as they say, more.
This is a fast-paced, 90-minute stage show with no dead air, no dead ideas, and no dead poets.
Read Douglas Holder's review from the Somerville News
Read Deb Powers' blog Poets & Poetry
Webmaster: Michael R. Brown