About

Baruch Porras-Hernandez  is a poet and theater artist who performs in the San Francisco Bay Area and throughout North America.

POETRY

He is the Co-Host/Co-Organizer for The San Francisco Queer Open Mic.  His work appears on DanseMacabre Online Literary Managzine and on print with Aim for the Head an anthology of Zombie Poetry –Write Bloody Publishing and OneDedCow literary Magazine.  He has work forthcoming in Divining Divas, anthology of poems by gay men and the women who inspire them-Lethe Press. 

He has organized and curated several successful poetry and music shows in San Francisco including most recently It Gets Gayer, Baruch’s Big Gay Poetry Show, two nights of celebrating gay male performance poets featuring legendary Regie Cabico. Before that he put togetherReturn to the Tender Nob, 2011 and Live from the Tender Nob, 2010 both shows had packed houses, both a combination of Poetry and Music which he hosted and curated part of the International Home Theatre Festival.

He has been a resident artist in the Spoken Word Program 2011, at the Banff Center in Alberta, Canada and Air Space (Artists in Residence) part of the Garage All Stars in San Francisco, where he developed his first solo play,  Reasons to Stay on the Ground which later premiered as part of the National Queer Arts Festival 2010.  His latest solo play, First Gentleman previewed  at The Marsh Theatre in 2011. Bay area credits include Blame it on the Alcohol, part of LitCrawl at Martuni’s, the Garage Art Space, The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Bawdy Storytellers, TOO MUCH: a Queer Art Marathon at MaMa Calizo’s Voice Factory, Artfag, SMACKDAB at Magnet and The Vetted Word Showcase.  National credits include Noches de Poesia Poetry Cabare (the 2011 Montreal Fringe Festival) the Berkeley Poetry Slam, Sparkle Series at BusBoys and Poets (Washington, DC) , Pace University’s Annual Poetry Slam in NYC and the 2010 Capturing Fire Queer Slam Summit where he was a Finalist.   

He was born in Toluca, Mexico and grew up in Albany, California.

ACTING

As an Actor his favorite roles include Tom Smith in How Tom Smith caused the 1906 Earth Quake and R.D. in Ancestor with Word for Word, Giulliano in FoolsFURY’s production of Big Love, Fadi in The Arab Israeli Cookbook with TheatreFIRST, Democratus in Elastic Future’s The Greek Play, and Werner Heisenberg in Copenhagen with The Mendocino Theatre Company.

Other work has been with CalShakes as a singing guard with Amy Freed’s Restoration Comedy, Shotgun Players as a Woodcutter in Blood Wedding, and a very gay Osric in some play called Hamlet with Impact Theatre. His most haunting role was singing and dancing as Osama bin Laden with Custom Made Theater Company’s dark musical comedy Bye Bye bin Laden!

He understudied the roles of Simon Stimson, Joe Stoddard, Constable Warren and the Professor for Berkeley Rep’s production of Our Town, and has worked on several staged readings and small projects with Magic Theatre, Aurora Theatre, Playwright’s Foundation, Exit Theater, and Cutting Ball Theater.

He became a citizen in 2008, so far, he thinks its pretty neat.