Talking About Acting

What made the Watts Prophets so different was that we were so visual. Each poem was to us a complete play and each poet contributed to that. We didn’t just stand on stage or walk back and forth… we would act it out.
—Made Hamilton, co-founder of the 1960s Watts Prophets poetry collective, to Brian Cross in Not About a Salary: Rap, Race and Resistance in Los Angeles, as quoted in Dorian Lynskey’s 33 Revolutions Per Minute—A History of Protest Songs, From Billie Holiday to Green Day (Ecco, 2011).