| Slash Coleman | |
|---|---|
| Born | Richmond, Virginia |
| Occupation | Storyteller, writer, producer |
| Website | |
| http://www.slashcoleman.com/ | |
Slash Coleman (born August 13, 1967) is an American storyteller, producer, and writer. He is best known for his one-man performance-based storytelling shows which combine clever wordplay, music, and poetic observations about family, spirituality, romantic relationships, and struggles to find a sense of home common with Generation X artists.
Contents |
Coleman was born Jeffrey Mark Coleman in Richmond, Virginia and raised in Chesterfield, Virginia. He is a first generation American and a third generation artist descended from a grandfather who was a dancer at the Moulin Rouge and a father, Mike Coleman, who is a prolific sculptor. His mother, Nicole, is a Holocaust survivor who was born in France. He legally changed his first name to Slashtipher with his barmitzva money to illuminate his Jewish past and to honor his grandparents who worked for the French Resistance during the war. Coleman studied writing and jazz piano at Radford University in Virginia, Middlesex University in London, and at Columbia College in Chicago where he received his master’s degree. He went on to earn a degree at East-West College of the Healing Arts and furthered his studies at the Upledger Institute and Oregon College of Oriental Medicine. He currently lives in Richmond, Virginia.
Coleman produced, wrote and starred in a PBS Special in 2008 entitled The Neon Man and Me[1][2] which is a tribute to his best friend, Mark Jamison, a neon artist from Roanoke, Virginia who was electrocuted while hanging a neon sign. The show seeks to illuminate a young Jewish man’s challenge with his sense of place in the world after his best friend’s death. The stage version has enjoyed extensive national tours since 2005 including a short run Off Broadway, and an invitation to the 2009 National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee, and in 2010 was distributed through NETA (The National Education Television Alliance) to PBS stations nationwide. The story behind The Neon Man and Me was recorded for StoryCorps and included in the archives at the Smithsonian.[3]
Coleman has written and toured with six stage plays:
Coleman began to tour the Fringe festival circuit in 2004 with his stage plays. Cities which have been included on this tour include: San Francisco, California, Washington, DC,[4][5] Boulder, Colorado[6] Minneapolis, Minnesota, Long Island, New York, and Provincetown, Massachusetts.
In 2008, Coleman began to publish articles on marketing and business for performers under the pseudonym, “Mr. Fringey”. He has collected an extensive list of resources including reviews of fringe festivals for fellow fringe performers which he shares on his blog called “Fringe or Die.”
In 2006, with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Virginia Commission for the Arts, Coleman created a public school curriculum entitled "Healing Communities: Helping Students Come to Terms with Tragedy, Loss, and Violence."[7] In 2009, as part of April’s "Month of the Grieving Child," Coleman produced a tour of student monologues relating to friendship and loss. As a result, Coleman has helped raise nearly $90,000 for non-profits to date.