In a shoe box cafe on a West Village side street, Craig Grant, known as muMs, had his back to the room. Then a young barista came to clear a cup away, Mr. Grant turned his head, and she stopped in her tracks. “You’re Poet,” she said, suddenly flustered, and he smiled and stuck his hand out to shake.
Poet, with a capital P, is the character Mr. Grant, 45, played on the HBO prison drama “Oz.” But a poet is also what he’s been for more than 20 years, since before he was an actor or a playwright. His new solo show, “A Sucker Emcee,” in previews at Labyrinth Theater Company for its Sept. 23 opening, is a memoir told partly through poetry, with the D.J. Rich Medina layering music beneath the words.
Mr. Grant, a Bronx native who came to poetry through hip-hop, first performed onstage downtown at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. “Everything starts as a poem,” he explained. “It’s the easiest way for me to form thoughts.”
The lines get blurry fast when you start talking about poetry in drama. Shakespeare is invoked, or the ancient Greeks. As the playwright-performer Dael Orlandersmith said the other day, “All theater has a bit of poetry.” But sometimes the versifying is particularly pronounced.
Click here for more information.
Links:
