Claudia Alick is alone in her room smoking her one cigarette of the day, getting ready for bed and telling us secrets. The next day she is showing family pictures and telling stories of traveling from Montana to New York City only to become a member of the “Employed Poor”. Through her video diary she describe her newest love—hip hop theatre—the trials and tribulations of forming a production company.

www.claudiaalick.com

Claudia Alick, 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.

EMPLOYEED POOR
Living in this city aint no joke!
I’m working 40 hours a week just to stay broke.
Property is still the great divider cause landowners still got all the power.
What’s the difference between me and an indentured servant
when 50 percent of my pay check goes just to pay rent?
I’ve got collectors siphoning me off just a little at a time
these monthly bleedings got me losing my mind!
I’m talking GAS, Electric, phone-I aint even got CABEL!-
If luxury is the Garden of Eden then call me Cain and Abel
cause I am fighting with myself. Struggling to retain my drive
cause ya have to keep on hustlin if ya want to stay alive.
See, I gambled on education but all I got is loans,
I went for the chicken but instead I got the bones.
I’m living in a Lilliputian apartment and I’m feeling like Gulliver.
I’ve got a bedroom/dining/living-room/other.
I’ve got a loft bed where I sleep high in the sky.
I climb the ladder each night reaching for my piece of the pie.
I rise before sunshine alone and in pain. Shower unconscious,
dreams dribble down the drain,
always running late, the train doors wake me with a jerk,
riding the middle passage each morn from home to work.
I’m getting sick of this Sisyphean struggle,
but all the alternatives only spell trouble.
What am I supposed to do, quit my job? become a bum?
I’ve done that- not being able to afford food is NOT FUN.
I’m on the treadmill heading to wealth and
I’m about to drop dead doing this shit for my health.

Visit www.claudiaalick.com or www.smokinword.com to read more of Claudia’s work.