From Crack Dealer to Broadway

Thirty-four-year-old Brooklyn man, Lemon Andersen, has certainly led a troubled life.

According to a New York Daily News story, he grew up around drugs (his mother dealt cocaine and his father was addicted to heroin), and his mother, father and stepfather all died of AIDS by the time he was 15. Andersen himself was arrested several times for robbery and dealing crack by the time he was 20 years old.

Luckily, Andersen found the strength to turn his life around from an unlikely source: poetry. Always drawn to the arts, in the mid-1990s Andersen randomly decided to attend a poetry reading at the El Puente Community Center in the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn. He found the stories and poems he heard to be truly inspiring, and he even met someone at the reading who offered him a job as a mentor and actor at the Teatro El Puente drama group.

That turning point led to huge things for Andersen. The poet performed on Broadway in Russell Simmons' Def Poetry Jam. Now, he's starring in a one-man show based on his own life, County of Kings. The show, which is co-produced by Spike Lee, combines rap, poetry and character impressions to depict growing up in a troubled family.

The play opened Monday at Manhattan's Public Theater and will run until November 8th. To learn more about the show and Andersen's inspiring story, click here.

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