Tony Cyprien

“A light that shined so bright, even after death, he made a prison yard unit.” 

For people who are incarcerated, many have suffered needlessly when they were sick or dying. Being ill is bad enough, and being incarcerated is bad enough, but through years of indifference, an extra layer of human cruelty became the norm. This is a story about the humanity inside prison walls in spite of everything. 

Politicians right and left jumped on the bandwagon of public safety to secure a seat in some political arena. The result was sentencing enhancements and a prison construction boom that still couldn’t keep up with the demand. The final result was prisons bursting at the seams. No one wanted to see it. But someone did. 

Tony Cyprien was born and raised in Watts, South Central Los Angeles, by his mother and grandmother, with the neighborhood gang members also playing a big role. He matriculated through the Los Angeles County juvenile halls and county camps, into the California Youth Authority, and ultimately state prison. He was released from state prison 15 years ago in 2011 after spending 26 years and eight days incarcerated.  The first time on stage, Tony Cyprien won a MOTH StorySlam, which led to two MOTH Mainstage Performances, and two MOTH Radio broadcasts on NPR. In 2023, Tony performed in Train Stories, earning him a nomination for Best Actor in the Bay Area from Broadway world – Regional. As a part of the Formerly Incarcerated People’s Performance Project (FIPPP), he was a featured performer in the 2025 UCSF-UC Law’s Consortium on Law, Science, and Health Policy, https://www.uclawsf.edu/event/survival-healing-and-performance-formerly-incarcerated-voices-on-health-justice-inside-out/ Tony was an invited performer at the 20th Anniversary Celebration of Tell It On Tuesday at the Marsh Theater, Berkeley. https://tellitontuesday.org/index.php/category/anniversary  and in January 2026, he performed at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre at the FIPPP Festival as the closing act on the Roda stage.  Tony has been a member of Marin Shakespeare Company’s Returned Citizen’s Theatre Troupe for over 10 years. Tony loves the spark that happens with live solo performance, the give and take with the audience, the creativity of it, morphing in and out of characters.