Paul Flores is a published playwright and nationally prominent
spoken word performer. Raised on the Tijuana/San Diego border,
issues of immigration, border experience, and Latino identity are
central to his work. A theater artist specializing in hip-hop and
bilingual performance, Flores co-wrote "De/Cipher" (2001) and "No
Man's Land" (2002) with Marc Bamuthi Joseph, "The
Fruitvale Project" (2003) with Elia Arce and "Fear of a Brown
Planet" (2005) directed by Tony Garcia. His first international
project REPRESENTA! (2007) is a bilingual hip-hop theater project
co-commissioned by San Francisco International Arts Festival and La
Peña Cultural Center, written and performed with Cuban rapper Julio
Cardenas and directed by and jointly researched in Havana with
Danny Hoch. REPRESENTA! toured seventeen cities, including Mexico
City's Teatro Hugo Arguelles. Flores is also a highly
respected youth arts development specialist. He is the co-founder
of Youth Speaks, and has worked with youth arts and development
organizations all over the nation. Flores continues to develop
creative outlets for gang identified and incarcerated youth at San
Francisco Youth Guidance Center, and Alameda Juvenile Justice
Center as a consultant for the City of Oakland's Measure Y
Anti-Violence Campaign. Flores has appeared on Season III and IV of
Russell Simmons Presents: Def Poetry Jam on HBO, and has performed
at over two hundred high schools and universities across the United
States. He is currently the San Francisco International Arts
Festival playwright in residence and teaches Hip-Hop Theater at
USF. Flores holds an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco
State University and has twice been awarded the National
Performance Network Creation Fund and the Center for Cultural
Innovation Individual Artist Grant.
