Joshua Walters is an internationally acclaimed performer, poet, educator, beatboxer and comic from San Francisco. He performs in the Bay Area, New York, Berlin, Istanbul and Jerusalem to audiences ranging in age from 9 to 90. He also facilitates performance workshops for middle schools, high schools, and colleges. Walters appears on radio and television stations including ABC-KGO in San Francisco and Radio X in Frankfurt, Germany.
A member of the 2007 Berkeley Poetry Slam Team, and competitor at the National Poetry Slam in Austin, TX, Walters now regularly hosts, as well as performs. His poetry is taught in classrooms and performed by others in speech competitions. Walters is an original member of the Bay Area beatbox collective, The Vowel Movement, founded in 2003, which continues as a platform for youth to express themselves through vocal percussion. Walters has shared the stage with hip hop legends Black Sheep and National Poet Laureate Amiri Baraka.
Theater performer for over a decade, Walters incorporates elements of spoken word and beatbox into his shows. In his first solo show, Madhouse Rhythm (2008), Walters uses humor to reframe the telling of his own experiences with Bipolar Disorder. Walters was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder at age 16. The next year, in 2002, he co-founded the DBSA (Depression Bipolar Support Alliance) Young Adults Chapter in San Francisco, one of the few support groups specifically for mentally ill young adults in the country. Walters now performs and speaks as a mental health advocate.
