Steve Connell
Encyclopedia
Steven Gerard Connell is an American
actor
, playwright
, poet and spoken word artist
.
, Connell is the youngest of two children. He graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles
(UCLA) with a Bachelor of Arts
in Theatre
.
. By 2003 he had won a number of national and regional slam championships in the United States, including the 2002 Hollywood Championship and the 2003 LA Championship. He was also the 2003 New Word Series Champion and, as captain of Team LA, won the 2003 National Poetry Championship. His skill as a poet and performer made him a sought-after spoken word artist in Los Angeles, making him a regular at Da Poetry Lounge, Fly Poets and other poetry venues in the United States. He also served as poet and creative director for two national spoken word tours, The Underground Poets Railroad and Norman Lear’s Declare Yourself
. As part of Declare Yourself he traveled across the United States in a campaign during the 2004 United States presidential elections to encourage young people to register to vote.
and was declared Best Solo Performance of 2005 by Entertainment Today.
Connell has also created works writing partner Sekou tha Misfit. They were invited by HBO to perform their play,No Easy Choice, at the 12th annual US Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado
. They were also commissioned by the American Civil Liberties Union
(ACLU) to create a new performance piece which was unveiled at the annual ACLU Membership Conference and followed that with Unabridged, a series of recorded and filmed poems, described by the ACLU as "a new collection of poetry written especially for the ACLU that celebrates the power of words and captures the passion behind several of our current battles in the courtrooms and in Congress."
The Word Begins written and performed with Sekou tha Misfit, and directed by Robert Egan, was developed at the Ojai Playwrights Conference
and had its world premiere
at the Signature Theatre in Arlington, Virginia, running from 2 October to 2 December 2007, where it received three Helen Hayes Award
nominations, The Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding New Play
, Outstanding Resident Play Award
and The Canadian Embassy Award for Outstanding Ensemble in a Resident Play
.
A collection of his one-man acts and spoken word, Jumping the Median, is being produced by Norman Lear for a theatrical run in 2008. His work is also featured in theatre curriculum for University courses and he tours and performs at colleges, universities and schools across the United States.
He is an outspoken political advocate, creating I Am An American and In Sheep’s Clothing to speak out, and against, the violation of civil liberties in the United States.
, Good Morning America
on ABC
, Hardball
on MSNBC
, Def Poetry
on HBO
(twice), Crossover on Showtime, the World AIDS Festival on MTV
, Lyric Café on B.E.T.
, as well as Oprah Winfrey
’s celebration of Maya Angelou
’s 75th birthday, Artisan Entertainment
's Belly DVD
and P Diddy
’s Annual "White Party". He has also performed at private events for Hillary Clinton
and Barack Obama
.
Connell has been featured in The Beat- a selection at The Sundance Film Festival, Dirty Sexy Money
and the 2008 film Blues.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
actor
Actor
An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...
, playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
, poet and spoken word artist
Spoken word
Spoken word is a form of poetry that often uses alliterated prose or verse and occasionally uses metered verse to express social commentary. Traditionally it is in the first person, is from the poet’s point of view and is themed in current events....
.
Biography
Born in Thousand Oaks, CaliforniaThousand Oaks, California
Thousand Oaks is a city in southeastern Ventura County, California, in the United States. It was named after the many oak trees that grace the area, and the city seal is adorned with an oak....
, Connell is the youngest of two children. He graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles
University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, USA. It was founded in 1919 as the "Southern Branch" of the University of California and is the second oldest of the ten campuses...
(UCLA) with a Bachelor of Arts
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
in Theatre
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
.
Career
Connell burst onto the spoken word scene in Los Angeles, CaliforniaLos Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
. By 2003 he had won a number of national and regional slam championships in the United States, including the 2002 Hollywood Championship and the 2003 LA Championship. He was also the 2003 New Word Series Champion and, as captain of Team LA, won the 2003 National Poetry Championship. His skill as a poet and performer made him a sought-after spoken word artist in Los Angeles, making him a regular at Da Poetry Lounge, Fly Poets and other poetry venues in the United States. He also served as poet and creative director for two national spoken word tours, The Underground Poets Railroad and Norman Lear’s Declare Yourself
Declare Yourself
Declare Yourself is a campaign initiated during the 2004 United States presidential elections to encourage young people to register to vote. It began as the "Declaration of Independence Road Trip", a 50-city cross-country tour of a rare Dunlap broadside of the Declaration of Independence lasting ...
. As part of Declare Yourself he traveled across the United States in a campaign during the 2004 United States presidential elections to encourage young people to register to vote.
Theatre
In the theatre his one-man show "40 Days", received positive reviews from Pick of the Week from LA Weekly and Critic’s Pick from Backstage Westand was declared Best Solo Performance of 2005 by Entertainment Today.
Connell has also created works writing partner Sekou tha Misfit. They were invited by HBO to perform their play,No Easy Choice, at the 12th annual US Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado
Aspen, Colorado
The City of Aspen is a Home Rule Municipality that is the county seat and the most populous city of Pitkin County, Colorado, United States. The United States Census Bureau estimates that the city population was 5,804 in 2005...
. They were also commissioned by the American Civil Liberties Union
American Civil Liberties Union
The American Civil Liberties Union is a U.S. non-profit organization whose stated mission is "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States." It works through litigation, legislation, and...
(ACLU) to create a new performance piece which was unveiled at the annual ACLU Membership Conference and followed that with Unabridged, a series of recorded and filmed poems, described by the ACLU as "a new collection of poetry written especially for the ACLU that celebrates the power of words and captures the passion behind several of our current battles in the courtrooms and in Congress."
The Word Begins written and performed with Sekou tha Misfit, and directed by Robert Egan, was developed at the Ojai Playwrights Conference
Ojai Playwrights Conference
The Ojai Playwrights Conference is a theatre festival held annually each August in Ojai, California. The mission of the conference is to offer play development resources to dramatists with the aim of supporting the creation of new work for the American theatre. Lasting ten days writers participate...
and had its world premiere
Premiere
A premiere is generally "a first performance". This can refer to plays, films, television programs, operas, symphonies, ballets and so on. Premieres for theatrical, musical and other cultural presentations can become extravagant affairs, attracting large numbers of socialites and much media...
at the Signature Theatre in Arlington, Virginia, running from 2 October to 2 December 2007, where it received three Helen Hayes Award
Helen Hayes Award
A Helen Hayes Award is a theater award named for the famed actress Helen Hayes to recognize excellence in professional theater in the Washington, D.C. area since 1983. The awards are managed by Linda Levy Grossman. and presented by the Washington Theatre Awards Society.-Awards:The Helen Hayes...
nominations, The Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding New Play
Helen Hayes Awards Resident Production
These Helen Hayes Awards are given for resident theatre productions in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. They include awards for the production itself, the direction, and the plays themselves.-Best Resident Production:* 1985 Cloud 9 - Arena Stage...
, Outstanding Resident Play Award
Helen Hayes Awards Resident Production
These Helen Hayes Awards are given for resident theatre productions in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. They include awards for the production itself, the direction, and the plays themselves.-Best Resident Production:* 1985 Cloud 9 - Arena Stage...
and The Canadian Embassy Award for Outstanding Ensemble in a Resident Play
Helen Hayes Awards Resident Acting
The Helen Hayes Awards are given for acting in resident theatre productions in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. The awards are generally divided between male and female performers, between lead and supporting performers, and since the early 1990s between dramatic plays and...
.
A collection of his one-man acts and spoken word, Jumping the Median, is being produced by Norman Lear for a theatrical run in 2008. His work is also featured in theatre curriculum for University courses and he tours and performs at colleges, universities and schools across the United States.
He is an outspoken political advocate, creating I Am An American and In Sheep’s Clothing to speak out, and against, the violation of civil liberties in the United States.
Film and television
His work has been featured on various television shows including ABC World NewsWorld News with Charles Gibson
ABC World News is the flagship daily evening program of ABC News, the news division of the American Broadcasting Company television network in the United States. Currently, the weekday editions are anchored by Diane Sawyer and the weekend editions are anchored by David Muir. The program has been...
, Good Morning America
Good Morning America
Good Morning America is an American morning news and talk show that is broadcast on the ABC television network; it debuted on November 3, 1975. The weekday program airs for two hours; a third hour aired between 2007 and 2008 exclusively on ABC News Now...
on ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
, Hardball
Hardball with Chris Matthews
Hardball with Chris Matthews is a talk show on MSNBC, broadcast weekdays at 5 and 7 PM hosted by Chris Matthews. It originally aired on now-defunct America's Talking and later CNBC. The current title was derived from a book Matthews wrote in 1988, Hardball: How Politics Is Played Told by One Who...
on MSNBC
MSNBC
MSNBC is a cable news channel based in the United States available in the US, Germany , South Africa, the Middle East and Canada...
, Def Poetry
Def Poetry
Def Poetry, also known as Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry or Def Poetry Jam, which was co-founded by Bruce George, Danny Simmons and Deborah Pointer, is an HBO television series produced by hip-hop music entrepreneur Russell Simmons. The series presents performances by established spoken word...
on HBO
Home Box Office
HBO, short for Home Box Office, is an American premium cable television network, owned by Time Warner. , HBO's programming reaches 28.2 million subscribers in the United States, making it the second largest premium network in America . In addition to its U.S...
(twice), Crossover on Showtime, the World AIDS Festival on MTV
MTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....
, Lyric Café on B.E.T.
Black Entertainment Television
Black Entertainment Television is an American, Viacom-owned cable network based in Washington, D.C.. Currently viewed in more than 90 million homes worldwide, it is the most prominent television network targeting young Black-American audiences. The network was launched on January 25, 1980, by its...
, as well as Oprah Winfrey
Oprah Winfrey
Oprah Winfrey is an American media proprietor, talk show host, actress, producer and philanthropist. Winfrey is best known for her self-titled, multi-award-winning talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind in history and was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2011...
’s celebration of Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou is an American author and poet who has been called "America's most visible black female autobiographer" by scholar Joanne M. Braxton. She is best known for her series of six autobiographical volumes, which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first and most highly...
’s 75th birthday, Artisan Entertainment
Artisan Entertainment
Artisan Entertainment Inc. was a privately held independent American movie studio until it was purchased by a Canadian studio, Lionsgate, in 2003. At the time of its acquisition, Artisan had a library of thousands of films developed through acquisition, original production, and production and...
's Belly DVD
Belly (film)
Belly is a 1998 film, the film directorial debut of music video director Hype Williams. Filmed in New York City as an urban drama, the film stars rappers DMX and Nas, alongside with Taral Hicks, Method Man dancehall artist Louie Rankin, R&B singer T-Boz...
and P Diddy
Sean Combs
Sean John Combs , also known by his stage names Diddy and P. Diddy, is an American rapper, singer, record producer, actor, and entrepreneur. He has won three Grammy Awards and two MTV Video Music Awards, and his clothing line earned a Council of Fashion Designers of America award. He was originally...
’s Annual "White Party". He has also performed at private events for Hillary Clinton
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton is the 67th United States Secretary of State, serving in the administration of President Barack Obama. She was a United States Senator for New York from 2001 to 2009. As the wife of the 42nd President of the United States, Bill Clinton, she was the First Lady of the...
and Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
.
Connell has been featured in The Beat- a selection at The Sundance Film Festival, Dirty Sexy Money
Dirty Sexy Money
Dirty Sexy Money is an American prime time drama series created by Craig Wright, which ran on the ABC from September 26, 2007 to August 8, 2009. The series was produced by ABC Studios, Bad Hat Harry Productions, Berlanti Television and Gross Entertainment...
and the 2008 film Blues.
Filmography
- The Beat (2003)
- Shanghai KissShanghai KissShanghai Kiss is a 2007 direct-to-DVD romantic drama comedy. The film was released on DVD on October 9, 2007.Hayden Panettiere won the Feature Film Award at the Newport Beach Film Festival for her role as Adelaide.- Synopsis :...
(voice) (2007) - The ListThe List (film)The List is a 2007 American independent feature film that was released nationwide on DVD June 11, 2008. It is based on the novel of the same name by author Robert Whitlow. The film was shot in Wilmington, North Carolina and Charleston, South Carolina...
(2007) - Blues (2008)