Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Andre Bradford. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Andre, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?
The seed was first planted when I took my very first bow after being the male lead in a play my freshman year of high school. I was originally cast as the understudy, and when the cast lead got in a fight and got expelled I got jumped up to the lead in my first ever play. I was exhilarated and terrified. I went home and memorized all of my lines that night, before any of the cast had fully mastered theirs. I don’t think my heart has ever raced as hard as it did when I was about to take the stage for the first time. That first opening night production is honestly a blur, but I do remember that at the end I heard the applause from a packed audience for something I felt was so natural to me; storytelling. I think in that moment something started to manifest and grow that would eventually lead me on this crazy and absolutely non-linear journey of being a full-time artist and speaker.
The span of time between that moment and when I was able to quit my full-time job at a tech startup company was sixteen years. In that time I had a ridiculous array of jobs. I worked at a movie theatre, sold cars, was a lighting tech, a bar back, sold IT, did commercials. But in every one of those jobs I could feel that seed still growing, still pulling me towards that natural inclination to share stories on the largest stages. My job now, as a performance poet and keynote speaker, was absolutely not in my plans or what I thought this would eventually look like. Yet it does feel like the culmination of what that first moment was always leading to, getting to do professionally something I loved doing.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
My name is Andre Bradford, my stage name is S.C. Says. I started performing slam or spoken word poetry in 2014 after sitting in the audience at the Austin Poetry Slam for six months just admiring other poet’s bravery and creativity. There was something about the rawness and the vulnerability that immediately drew me in. I had a strong theatre background and was incredibly comfortable telling other people’s stories, but hadn’t really considered telling my own. In a lot of ways, slam poetry helped me to find my voice and to see how powerful our vulnerability can be in bringing people together.
I’d soon find I had a knack for finding creative ways to talk about things like being mixed race (I’m Jamaican and Mexican, or Jamexican), what struggling with depression is really like, or how important it is to find self love before seeking romantic love. I went on to become a two time Austin Poetry Slam Champion, a three time Texas Grand Slam finalist, won a national group piece championship, and was the 2022 Grand Slam Champion of Texas.
While I am incredibly competitive, I found that my favorite parts of performing were the dialogues I’d have afterwards with mostly complete strangers. Time and time again I’ve seen that if I’m willing to be honest and vulnerable with my own struggles and emotions, then the people listening are more willing to share vulnerable and authentic parts of their story with me and with each other. I LOVE that. I’ve had deeper conversations after a performance with people I’ve known for five minutes than with people I’ve known for five years. I wanted to find a way to cultivate more of these dialogues and help people to see the connecting points with the people around them. In 2017 I got the idea to write a slam poetry show around Purposeful Empathy. The show would use slam poetry, personal anecdotes, and research to help audiences see how life changing implementing more intentional empathy could be in their lives. I titled the show Kintsukuroi: Building with Purposeful Empathy, and included five of the most meaningful poems to me at the time. The show title was inspired by the Japanese art form Kintsugi where you take a piece of pottery that’s been broken and you mend it back together using a golden lacquer, so the finished piece is arguably more beautiful after it was broken than it was in the first place. When I think about how vital, powerful, and healing empathy is, the beauty of that metaphor really rang home for me. Once I finished writing it, I started pitching the show to different independent schools around the country since I’d had some experience performing at schools doing work for a performance group called COMETRY.
Within a few weeks I had already booked my first three shows, and after that first performance for a high school in MA I was absolutely hooked. The show is a unique blend of engaging poetry, comedic anecdote, and educational information and there was a line of students and faculty after that first performance that wanted to either thank me for being real and vulnerable with them, tell me how my story related to theirs, or both. I’ve now performed the show for over 60 different independent schools across the country, 20 different colleges and universities, and several educational and business development conferences. I also lead Writing Workshops to help others begin to tell their stories in creative ways, and I have an Empathy Deep Dive Workshop that educates everyone from students to business execs on how to cultivate more Purposeful Empathy both in their lives and in their environments. In January 2021 I was able to quit my full time job as a Sales Director for a tech company in Austin to pursue performance and speaking full time. It’s been daunting, especially on the backend of a pandemic, but I genuinely love this work and am so incredibly grateful for every single stage I’m able to share my story on.
Just this September I released my first book of poetry through Write About Now titled Golden Brown Skin. It’s a culmination of the last 8 years of writing and performing poetry and this journey of self-reflection and growth that I’ve been on.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
So I was actually in Dublin with two of my best friends since elementary school when the world started to shut down due to Covid. 2020 was setting itself up to be my best year yet for performances, and I remember getting email after email of performance cancellations. It’s incredibly humbling knowing a lot of my success or growth can be completely out of my hands, and even now I’m still incredibly wary of another major world event putting a pause on live events.
2020 was a hard year in so many ways, but it also forced me to think of my work differently and adapt. I pivoted quickly to virtual programming and fleshed out my workshops to include multi-day content. I further honed my performance ability, as performing for a screen vs. a live audience required a dramatic increase in presence and intention. I was no longer competing with the attention of someone in a room where social etiquette would keep most people from being constantly distracted, I now needed content that kept people engaged when the entirety of the internet was just a click away from them or they had already been on Zoom for hours that day. So I further fine-tuned my main presentation so that the content was even more engaging, interactive, and transformative. Because of this work, I was able to bounce back even stronger than what I had projected for that year, and at the beginning of 2021 I was able to quit my full time job to make performing and speaking my primary profession.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
The conversations and connections that my work inspires are easily my favorite part of what I do. I absolutely love performing, but when a complete stranger comes up to me in tears and just says to me “thank you,” there’s nothing that compares to that feeling. Knowing that some part of my story helped someone else feel less lonely in theirs. It’s the most rewarding thing in the world.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.scsayspoetry.com
- Instagram: @scsays
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/scsayspoetry
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scsays/
- Twitter: @scsays
- Youtube: @scsayspoetry