Tony Jenkins Artist

Spoken Word Poetry:
I have several years of experience writing to assignment to meet the specific needs of a hosting organization. If your event is about climate change, I can write you a compelling poem about climate change, I am constantly creating new content. My repetoire mainly consists of 3-5 minute-long poems, ranging topics from black lives matter/racial identity, to domestic abuse, to grief/loss, LGBTQ, and beyond. I think my sweetest spot is writing love poems and poems of self-love/self- empowerment. I can work with short notice to fill particular time slots in events and can cater my performance to venue needs. I am comfortable working in theatrical spaces, conference halls, corporate spaces, outdoor venues, and with or without a mic. I can dress to suit the event atmosphere and am comfortable speaking on issues and my experiences outside of the poems (mingling/motivational speaking, what have you). I am a traveling poet, so my logistical needs are few and I can be very flexible as long as I know what you need.

Clowning:
I am comfortable creating content for events or bringing work that has already been staged and adapting it to the performance space. I would need some amount of rehearsal time in the venue for spacing at minimum. I mainly work as a silent red nose clown, performing short vignettes that explore deep themes (isolation, first love, redemption). Pieces can be very concrete and identifiable storytelling with objects and props and can be abstract movement choreography. My work is centered in innocence and discovery and usually involves a direct audience connection. It is normally a narrative and includes the use of special items or music that become metaphors and are endowed with magic. I am also free to do simpler entertainment with juggling, slap-stick humor, and art/craft making with younger audiences.

Acting:
I am a classically trained actor with experience in all mediums.

Tony Jenkins is an actor, spoken word poet, voice over artist, and clown based in New York City. His original choreopoem, BLACK MAGIC, won Best Overall Play at Fringe NYC and has gone on to two critically acclaimed, sold-out runs at national theatre festivals. He has traveled across the country with his writing as the keynote presenter at arts and education conferences, specialty events, and performance venues: the Harvard Graduate School, the NAACP, the NC Arts Council, and N.A.R.E.N., to name a few. His most recent hour-long clown piece, Last Man in the Moon, premiered at Lincoln Center Education. As an actor, he was last seen making his Off-Broadway debut in Michael Weller’s Jericho with The Attic Theater Co. He is a proud graduate of UNC School of the Arts (BFA ‘17).

Minimal technical requirements. If the space is not accoustically adequate, a single microphone. Lighting options/design preferred but not required.