Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai is an award-winning spoken word poet, playwright, and filmmaker whose work has been featured at over 600 venues worldwide including the White House, Apollo Theater in Harlem, Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, BAM, Tyra Banks’ Flawsome Ball, & three seasons of “HBO Def Poetry.” Award recipient of the Illinois Arts Council, Asian American Arts Alliance, New York Foundation for the Arts, Asian Women Giving Circle, and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Kelly has been profiled on Idealist in NYC’s Top 40 NYC’ers Who Make Positive Social Change, AngryAsianMan.com’s “30 Most Influential Asian Americans Under 30,” and HBO’s “East of Main Street: Asians Aloud.”
Chicago-born yet Brooklyn-based, Kelly’s formative experiences as a community organizer, domestic violence counselor, oral historian, and youth worker deeply inform her commitment to the arts and entertainment as a means to forge the foundations for social justice, non-violence and the uplift of underrepresented people, ideas, and movements. She was awarded the 2010 Outstanding Asian American Alumni Award from the Asian American Cultural Center at UIUC, following in the footsteps of filmmaker Ang Lee. She is also a proud alum of Public Allies Chicago and worked previously with the Posse Foundation Inc.
How did you get into this line of work? Was there a specific event that led to this career path?
I started doing spoken word as a high school student, and that led to a lot of different avenues for me to explore artistically. I wouldn't say that one specific event led to this career path, but a series of different events from being on TV for my work as a spoken word poet to getting to travel all around the world and meeting different people who do this art form. Each moment has propelled the next moment, so a big part of this career path is about being very open to what speaks to me creatively in the world right now and pursuing that as I move into the future.
What is a typical day like for you?
Every day is different! Some days, I'm on tour. Other days, I'm in Brooklyn writing new poems, plays, or films. In a typical week, I could be doing pre-production for a new short film to rehearsing with a dance company for an upcoming collaboration to performing spoken word at a cultural or political event. I get to meet a lot of very different people through the work that I do both in terms of collaborators and audience members, so I'm very thankful for that.
How do you describe your ethnicity?
I self-identify as Chinese Taiwanese American. My mom's family is from Shanghai originally and my dad's family is from Tainan.
What are your strongest skill sets? How did you acquire them?
Being adaptable by working hard to adapt to new environments every day.
Who inspires you?
I get inspiration from a lot of different folks whether it's poets and activists like the late great Maya Angelou and Yuri Kochiyama to random people I meet while on tour doing exciting unique things. Mostly, I am inspired by people who have the courage to really be themselves.
What are you currently working on?
I'm working on developing a new multimedia performance piece about Chinese political artist Ai Wei Wei. My goal is to really dig into his history in China and New York, while incorporating spoken word into it. Every new project is a challenge that I'm trying to work out moving forward.
What is one of the major life lessons you have learned?
There is no finite point where people have things all figured out. It's so strange how adults so often tell younger people that they have to "choose" what they want to do, as if that question ever goes away. Self-reinvention is a crucial part of what it means to have a meaningful life in any field, at any age. We don't hear enough about the lawyer who became a baker or the bike messenger who became a teacher and then a painter or the landscape architect who became a stay at home dad and then started a green business. Career change and life change is a natural and normal process, and it's important to stay awake and alive to it. I have a very non-traditional career path, but ironically, I've been in my career longer than most of my friends around the same age. It's a strange world when being an artist is more consistent and stable than other industries, but it speaks to the fact that if you follow your heart, work hard and efficiently, and consistently reinvent your relationship to yourself and your work - that will provide more stability and satisfaction than doing what someone else told you is right for your life.
To learn more about Kelly or catch one of her performances in person, follow her at:
Kelly's Website: http://www.yellowgurl.com
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/kztsai
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/yellowgurlpoet
Instagram: http://instagram.com/yellowgurlpoet
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kztsai
Photo Credit: Beto Sepulveda
