(writer poet performer director)
"Watching Stephen is a spoken word master class. Equally fluid with complex rhyme schemes and wordplay. he's one of the best to pick up a mic. truly one of my favorite poets."
– George Watsky (Rapper, Poet)
"One of the best Slam Poets in the country!"
- CNN
"Steve..you have a really nice name."
- Stevie Wonder
"You were in that show!? You were really good."
- Patrick Swayze
"Stephen brings a fierce intelligence, deep empathy, and a ton of craft to every creative endeavor. Working with him is exhilarating."
– Tony Taccone (Artistic Director, Tony® Award-winning Berkeley Repertory Theatre)
Stephen Colman
Stephen Colman is an award-winning playwright poet performer director and producer. A member of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe 1998 championship slam team, Stephen was the first poet to perform on Def Poetry on HBO. As the inaugural poet of the series, Stephen helped introduce the world to the burgeoning spoken word movement. He went on to co-write and co-star in the Tony® Award-winning Def Poetry on Broadway. A long-time creative collaborator of performance artist Sarah Jones, Stephen co-conceived and assistant directed Sarah's Tony® Award-winning smash-hit solo show Bridge and Tunnel. Produced by Meryl Streep, New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood called Bridge and Tunnel, “A sweet spirited valentine to New York City, its polyglot citizens and the larger notion of an all-inclusive America."
Stephen has produced theater, television and film projects for a variety of popular venues and major studios, including Warner Brothers Television, Paramount Television, HBO Films, Lemon Andersen's "County of Kings" with Spike Lee at The Public Theater and The Sarah Jones Show on Bravo.
He is the co-author of Burning Down The House: Selected Poems from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe's National Poetry Slam Champions. Soft Skull Press 1999 and Def Poetry Jam and More. Broadway Books 2005. His poems have appeared in the anthologies New America: Contemporary Literature for a Changing Society. AutumnHouse 2012 and In Your Face: Poems About Real Life. Scholastic 2002.
You can catch Stephen playing around NYC with his indie hip-hop americana band S.a.L.a.D.