Paul Outlaw is…

…a powerful actor and performer… —Jeff Slayton, LA DANCE CHRONICLE

…a compelling, dominating, presence… —Mark Swed, LOS ANGELES TIMES

…a radical hip-hop torch singer… —Charles McNulty, LOS ANGELES TIMES

…formidable… —Michael Scott Moore, SF WEEKLY

Paul Outlaw is…

…me. Welcome to my online home.

I am a shapeshifter and a griot: a transformer and a storyteller, a chameleon and a historian. I tell the stories of my family, my community and my world, and in those stories I take on multiple roles. I am male, I am female; I am Black, I am white; I am young, I am old; I am you, I am me.

I’m a Los Angeles-based multidisciplinary performing artist whose practice straddles experimental theater, performance art and popular music. The ongoing goal of my work is to unravel complex notions of self found within oppositional forces in society. In confronting the social constructions of race and gender, my work examines legacies of white supremacist, patriarchal violence—both physical and psychological—throughout Euro-American history. Furthermore, my mission as an artist is to give voice to the stories, fears and dreams of ancestors and contemporaries whose participation and opportunities in the arts have historically been constrained by hierarchical power structures.

I was born in New York City’s Bellevue Hospital and raised on the Lower East Side in the Jacob Riis Projects on Avenue D. My solo projects and collaborations have been presented across the United States and in Europe, where I lived full-time for ten years and maintain a second home in Berlin.

I am a proud recipient of one of the 2012 COLA (City of Los Angeles) Individual Artist Fellowships, which honor artists “who dedicate themselves to an ongoing body of excellent work, represent a relevant progression through their pieces or series, exemplify a generation of core ideas in their field, garner respect from their peers and serve as role models for other artists.”

The struggles of my tribes—people of color, LGBTQIA+ folk, independent artists—inspire and inform the work, which I perform in churches, terminals, parks, nightclubs and galleries—and yes, sometimes even in traditional theaters. This multiplicity of venues supports my challenging of the conventional relationships in a live performance. Where are we? Who is the audience? Who is the performer? Who’s watching whom? I believe that contemporary performance must offer people of all ages and backgrounds a shared experience that is fresh and relevant to their lives in a time when it’s become easy to retreat into the isolation and safety of screens and devices.

I believe in the transformative power of live performance.

Paul Outlaw is…

…eternal. He is legion.

Outlaw discovers booty left by those much too faint of heart to unbury the chests of pain and torture that are the Black experience in the United States. That he finds joy only attests to the specificity of his excavations. The joy is not in the material. The joy is in knowing that many chose to survive and pass down this sensibility for any strong enough to learn it, earn and use it.

Paul Outlaw finds joy in forcing you to re-witness the terrible, the atrocious, because it is part of your American dream.

—Anna Beatrice Scott, performance artist/ethnographer/educator