Spoken Word lights up America’s Got Talent 2020

Simon Cowell in tears as Brandon Leake Makes AGT History With Powerful Poetry

Well the cat is out of the bag. Spoken Word Poetry makes great theatre.

Here at Blue Moon Plays we’ve been ahead of the trend; championing the idea that verse poetry makes great theatre and, finally, the entertainment industry has been shown the truth of that, with Brandon Leake’s moving performance on America’s Got Talent in June 2020.

Verse on Stage, Spoken Word, Poetic Drama

All of those terms mean the same thing. Poetry on stage is a powerful form of storytelling that engages audiences on a deep emotional level though poetic forms of writing. In Brandon Leake’s case he performs his own poetry as a dramatic monologue. Blue Moon Plays has been publishing books of poetry, dramatic monologues and poetic drama for several years, including Shakespeare, adapted for teens and young people.

For Directors looking for poetry specially written or selected for Spoken Word performance, we created a special category on our site Verse on Stage

I wrote a post about how Spoken Word performance and Verse on Stage is making a comeback. Since the pandemic struck live theatre productions around the world, poetry and spoken word as a theatrical medium has really taken off.

Indeed we have just launched a new imprint Unicorn Bay Press, to publish poetic works supremely suited to Spoken Word performance and stage productions.

Robert P. Arthur invented the term ” Poem-Play “ for works he has written or co-written which intersperses poems, dialogue and sometimes songs, to create a rich tapestry for theatre productions. During his career, he has carried the roles of poet, playwright, actor and director and is supremely qualified to draw on all those roles to write luminous vibrant works of poetry for the stage.

Blue Moon Plays has so far published eighteen books of poetic drama suitable for spoken word, performance poetry and verse drama for all ages and on many different topics.