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Sarah Jones

 

Sarah Jones is a playwright, poet, actor and activist. She attended Bryn Mawr College where she was the recipient of the Mellon Minority Fellowship, then returned to New York and began performing, eventually winning the Nuyorican Poets Café's 1997 Grand Slam Championship and working with such artists as Paul Simon, Derek Walcott and Gil Scott-Heron. Jones' Drama Desk award-nominated solo show Surface Transit has enjoyed sold-out runs at The Kennedy Center and the American Place Theatre among others, and was presented at HBO's Aspen Comedy Arts Festival where it won the Best One Person Show award, 2000 after touring internationally. Jones' work has also been featured on albums including the Lyricist Lounge, Vol. 1, and published in numerous magazines and anthologies. She has performed in such diverse settings as Lincoln Center, The Apollo Theater, Riker's Island, The Public Theater and the 92nd Street Y, and alongside such luminaries as Charles Dutton, Susan Sarandon and Meryl Streep. Jones is the recipient of grants and funding from the Ford Foundation and Poets and Writers/NYFA. Her critically acclaimed second solo show, Women Can't Wait, was commissioned by international women's rights organization Equality Now, and performed at the United Nations for the International Conference on Women's Rights, June 2000. Jones was chosen by Time Magazine as a person to watch, featured as the "It" performer of the year on Entertainment Weekly's "It List", and counted among Variety's top ten comedic talents of the year, all in 2000, the same year she was Ms. Magazine's October cover "girl". Jones has been featured on Nightline, ABC World News, and in PBS' award-winning City Life series; appeared in the Spike Lee film Bamboozled; starred in the celebrated Vagina Monologues off-Broadway and in LA; and recently premiered her third piece, Waking the American Dream, on immigrant rights for the National Immigration Forum. Jones also performed solo and with partner, poet Steve Colman, throughout South Africa, Europe, India and Nepal in 2001. In her "spare time" and with the help of Gloria Steinem, Russell Simmons, and other supporters, Jones is fighting the FCC's censorship of her celebrated, anti-misogynist poem/song, Your Revolution, from radio airplay with an historic lawsuit. Jones (performing Your Revolution) and Colman are both featured on Simmons' Def Poetry on HBO. sarahjonesonline.com is Jones' new cyberhome, which she invites you to visit.

 

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