Collapsible Poetics Theater

"... The art of play has found a very talented proponent. Part carnivalesque rap, part sleight-of-hand hustle, Collapsible Poets Theater maneuvers its way through public language of several sorts to give theater a Realpolitik poetic voice. . . . From "BALK TO BILK" wordplay doubles as subversive text in virtue of its voicing passed through from player to player. . . . The poetry, built of linguistic slippage, occurs all the more readily for the bilingual speaker or the ex-patriot, whose frames of reference are plural and yet destabilized."--from the foreword by Marjorie Welish

RODRIGO TOSCANO is the author of To Leveling Swerve (2005), Platform (2004), The Disparities (2002) and Partisans (1999). His poetry has appeared in Best American Poetry 2004, War and Peace (2004 & 2007), In the Criminal's Cabinet: An anthology of poetry and fiction (2004), and in McSweeney's "Poets Picking Poets." His polyvocalic pieces, poetics plays, and body-movement poems, and radio pieces have been performed and broadcast widely. His work has been translated into French, German, Italian, and Catalonian. Toscano is originally from Southern California. He works in Manhattan at the Labor Institute, and lives in Brooklyn.