Performance Studies MA student Claudia Alick is the recipient of the 2005 Starving Artists Award, a cash grant of up to $7500 awarded annually to an up-and-coming, New York City-based artist or arts organization. The Starving Artist Award supports and promotes the creation of new work by emerging artists. The award will support Claudia's work as a spoken word artist.
Claudia Alick is the Executive Producer and Artistic Director of Smokin Word Productions, is the author of the chap-books "The Haiku Scam", "Disingenuous", reviews of hip-hop literature in BUST magazine, and many plays that have been seen on the stages of The Kennedy Center, Woolly Mammoth Theatre, LaMama ETC, 45 Bleeker, Chashama Experimental Theatre, New Perspectives Theatre, and PS 122 in the 2002 and 2003 NYC Hip Hop Theatre Festivals. Her play "6 Hits" won the audience award in the Downtown Urban Theatre Festival. She has won poetry slams at such venues as Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Hottest Poets, Urbana Slam at The Bowery Poetry Bar, and Louder Arts at Bar 13 where she qualified as a finalist for their national slam teams. Other performance credits include 2 seasons of the Peabody award winning series HBO's Def Poetry Jam, the film "TerrorMarketers", and features in the documentaries "WordJunky" (dir. Audrey Colcannon) and Ladies on the Mic's project on Women in hip-hop (dir. Jessica Habie). Claudia teaches spoken word workshops for children, adults, corporate groups, and the incarcerated. She has guest lectured at New York University (NYU) and Montgomery College, taught at Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning, Bell Multi-Cultural Highschool with Arena Stage, The Shakespeare Theatre's South East Project, P.A.L. After-school centers, at Riker's Island with Community Word Project, and at high-schools in New York with Creative Arts Team. Claudia also runs the playwrights workshop for MC's and poets, WORDSHOP.
