Sometimes you think they must have come out of the chimp cages at the Bronx zoo.
When you're a kid with artistic yearnings brought up in the Bronx, you don't get fed up too easily.
I grew up in the South Bronx, raised by my grandmother, who scrapped and scraped to make sure I had a roof over my head and food in my stomach. I was painfully aware of what it was like to live with limited resources and a certain level of uncertainty.
Everyone at school seems to go by a nickname. Kat, Frosty, Bronx, Boo Bear, Jelly Bean, Freckles.
One of the things that made me want to be an actor more than ever was seeing a Chekhov play, "The Sea Gull," when was 14 in the Bronx.
It's like hip hop all over again, back in the '70s back in the Bronx, when it was just bubbling. But it's going to be huge.
I grew up in the Bronx, but in Riverdale - not exactly an area of New York that's known for being rough and tumble.
I come from the South Bronx - a true descendant of the melting pot. I grew up in a really mixed neighborhood; it was a very integrated life.
I started off as a graffiti artist in the South Bronx. My tag name was 'Loco' because I would go crazy and tag anywhere I wanted, in the weirdest places.
My life growing up was a twisted Bronx version of The Color Purple. It had a much different soundtrack and no trees, but that desperation was the same.
When I say myself, I don't mean just as a woman of color, as a girl who's growing up in the Bronx, as people growing up in some way economically-challenged, not growing up with money. It was also even just the way we spoke. The vernacular. I learned that it's alright to say "ain't. " My characters can speak the way they authentically are, and that makes for good story. It's not making for good story to make them speak proper English when nobody speaks like that on the playground.
