biography

  Tim Barsky is a graduate of Brown University with a degree in Islamic & Judaic religious studies who has also studied at the Berklee School of Music, and with the renowned Chassidic folklorist and archivist Fishel Bresler.  He has worked as a producer for the Providence Black Repertory Company, as a fire juggler in Dublin, Ireland, a street outreach worker & emergency youth advocate for the state health department of Rhode Island, and as a flute-beatboxer with over a dozen b-boy/b-girl (breakdancing) crews including Ground FX, Fillmore Rocks, & Sisterz of the Underground.  A musician-composer and playwright-performer, he was recently awarded a $50,000 Gerbode Emerging Playwright's Grant for TRACK IN A BOX, a hip-hop and circus based play about junkie cops, strippers & giant puppets which is set to premiere in 2009.  His work has been produced and performed at The Brava Theatre (2006-2008), Climate Theatre (2008), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco (2005), Julia Morgan Theatre in Berkeley (2005), Traveling Jewish Theatre in San Francisco (2004), The Exit Theatre in San Francisco (2003), The Finborough Theatre in London, UK (2002)and AS220 in Providence RI (1997-2001). In addition he is a co-founder and lead organizer for The Vowel Movement, the oldest beatboxing crew on the West Coast.  A former line-producer for the Burning Man Arts Festival, & a member of the Hybrid Project at SF's Intersection for the Arts, he has also been a guest artist and lecturer at the Royal College of Art (London), Stanford University, RISD, & Oberlin College, a featured speaker at The American Press Institute, a resident artist at Lockwood Elementary School in East Oakland.  and a beatboxing instructor in SF juvenile detention facilities.  Currently he is artistic director of City Circus, & an artist-in-residence at San Francico's Climate Theater.