Paul Outlaw, born in New York City’s Bellevue Hospital and raised on the Lower East Side (in the Jacob Riis Projects on Avenue D), is a Los Angeles and Berlin-based multidisciplinary performing artist whose award-winning solo projects have been presented across the United States and in Europe. In confronting the social constructions of race and gender, his work examines legacies of white supremacist, patriarchal violence—both physical and psychological—throughout Euro-American history. Paul is the recipient of a COLA (City of Los Angeles) Individual Artist Fellowship (2012), two Lincoln City Fellowships (2020, 2021), two Ucross Foundation artist residencies (2020, 2021), and grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Art, Center for Cultural Innovation and the Dramatists Guild Foundation, among others.
Trained as an actor at the Phillips Exeter Academy and New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, Paul Outlaw has portrayed an eclectic spectrum of roles that includes James Baldwin, Ira Aldridge, Jeffrey Dahmer, Nat Turner, Sigmund Freud, Jesse Owens, William Randolph Hearst, Donald “Cinque Mtume” DeFreeze, Hades Lord of the Underworld, Tom Sawyer, the Mad Hatter, the Queen of Hearts, the Scarecrow of Oz, Shakespeare’s Mercutio and Beckett’s Vladimir. He played the title role in Pepe Danquart’s Schwarzfahrer, winner of the 1994 Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film.
Paul was the lyricist and lead vocalist for the Berliner bands Snow Blind Twilight Ferries and Fortified Static; backing vocalist for Mad Romeo; and guest vocalist and lyricist for the dance project General Motor and legendary post-punk constellation Die Haut. He is a featured vocalist on Splendor and Misery (2016), clipping.’s second full-length album release on Sub Pop Records/Deathbomb Arc.
Paul’s recent and long-standing collaborators include Asher Hartman, Rosanna Gamson, Curt Lemieux, Joe Seely, Teatr CHOREA, Carole Kim/Carl Stone, Lior Shamriz, Michael Michetti, Patrick Kennelly, Lola Gonzàlez/Oguri/Paul Chavez, Marike Splint, Michael Portnoy, Maciej Sobociński, Patrick Michael Ballard, and Sara Lyons. Collaborations and solo projects have been presented by LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art); The Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles); Machine Project/Getty (Los Angeles); Machine Project/Armand Hammer Museum (Westwood); Highways Performance Space (Santa Monica); LAPP (Los Angeles Performance Practice); Maxim Gorki Theater (Berlin); Boston Court Pasadena; The Lab (San Francisco); Yale Union (Portland, OR); Southern Exposure (San Francisco); Cannonball (Miami); Infernoesque (Berlin); Kellogg Gallery (Pomona); Newtown/LA FilmForum/Cinefamily (Los Angeles); LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions); GES-2/V-A-C Foundation (Moscow); and REDCAT/Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater (Los Angeles).
Under the banner of OutlawPlay, Paul is the creator (or co-creator) of experimental theater works and performances including Here Be Dragons (1995), Berserker (2003), What Did I Do to Be So Black and... (2011), The Late, Late Show (2013), “Becoming Angeleno” (2017), BIRTHDAY SUITe (2017), Shine (2018) and the in-development projects BBC (Big Black Cockroach), DUET, WALL BERLINER, WAHLBERLINER and TENTH (a documentary film).
In addition to numerous performances in Los Angeles, Paul has also appeared at national and international festivals such as TBA/Time-Based Art Festival (Portland, OR), Queerweek 22 (Berlin), Jakarta Biennale, LAX Festival (Los Angeles, CA), Madness and the Arts World Festival (Harbourfront Centre, Toronto, Canada), Sternzeichen II (Theater am Turm, Frankfurt am Main, Germany), Blacktino Queer Performance (Northwestern University, Evanston, IL), Out on the Edge (Theater Offensive, Boston, MA) and the Fringe Festivals of San Francisco and New York.