Style Weekly
Valley Haggard
Slash Coleman Cover Story
January 25, 2006

As soon as you try to put Renaissance man and
prodigal son Slashtipher J. Coleman into a box, he
jumps out. This Chester native, an
actor/writer/singer/artist/musician/masseuse/surfer,
paid to have his name changed with his bar mitzvah
money in 1985, feeling that “Slashtipher” embraced
the spirit of his grandfather, who came from a family of
gypsies, danced in
Style Weekly Winter Arts
Photo/ Steven Sulpakas
the Moulin Rouge and joined the French Resistance. “Slashtipher is the name
that propelled me out into the world,” he says, “and it is the name that brought me
back [to Richmond].”

Returning in 2004 after a nearly 20-year adventure that took him to Alaska, Hawaii,
England, Scotland and all over South America, Coleman is finally ready to settle
down in Virginia — sort of. That is, when he’s not on the U.S. college circuit or the
Fringe Festival in New York and Edinburgh, or taking his one-man show, “The
Neon Man and Me,” on tour.

The show is a hilarious and moving eulogy to Mark Jamison, his best friend who
died in 2004 while hanging neon. A benefit for the family Jamison left behind, the
show explores bereavement and recovery. It’s also “a vehicle that embraces all
parts of myself,” Coleman says. Sans props or costumes, there’s nothing to
obscure the beautiful punch of his story, one Coleman says he’s too passionate
about to grow bored with.
Coleman’s next performance, “Herbert Mermelstein’s Big Jew Show,” promises nothing less than a Yiddish three-ring
circus, complete with a live band, a surprise guest and loads of laughs. Scheduled to premiere in the fall at the Virginia
Holocaust Museum and the Weinstein Jewish Community Center, the “Big Jew Show” is inspired by the comedy of
Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Woody Allen and Mr. Bean. Coleman will explore the issues and questions that have
emerged from the fated union of his French Jewish mother and Italian Catholic father.
Coleman’s CD, “Conversations With a Southern Wonder-Boy,” and his broad collection of
whimsical paintings are also full of poetry and strongly lyrical. And he’s at work on his
second book, “The Four Delicious Moons,” a semiautobiographical novel about a boy who
lives with his alcoholic biker dad and with the help of a drunken rabbi becomes a concert
pianist as his ticket out of Chester. Also in the works is a DVD package with a 30-minute
documentary about “The Neon Man and Me” and four music videos, one of which will use
only Claymation.
Slashtipher J. Coleman
Playwright, Performer
photo: Stephen Sulpakus
After a year at work upholstering furniture for his family’s North Side business, Tinker’s, Coleman plans to join the ranks
of the rare breed of artist who is able to quit his day job and live off the fruits of creative effort alone. He received money
from the Virginia Commission for the Arts to conduct writing residencies in high schools, and he’s teaching writing
workshops at Comedy Alley, C3 and through the Henrico County Adult Education program. Coleman is a one-man band
and a whirling dervish of creative resource. But don’t blink as he spirals past — you wouldn’t want to miss a thing.

Coleman will perform “The Neon Man and Me” at the Bainbridge Art Center Friday, March 10, and Saturday, March 11, at 7
p.m. Learn more at www.slashtipher.com.
© Slash Coleman 2006