When not participating in his high school's swim team, he spent time at Oklahoma City's only open mic night.
The film followed Sia and his Nuyorican teammates (Saul Williams, Jessica Care Moore and muMs da Schemer) as they competed at the 1996 National Poetry Slam.
In the book Words In Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam, author Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz wrote of Sia's impact, noting Beau Sia took Maggie Estep's pop culture reference-heavy work to the next level, bouncing across the stage, frenzied and electrified.
Sia was a firebrand who seemed determined to smash the prevailing stereotypes of Asian-America, the ones that painted Asian-Americans as being meek, passive and voiceless.
Sia portrays a minor character, Cicero, in Jeremy Saulnier's directorial debut, Murder Party (2007).
In 2015, Sia appeared in yet another Jonathan Demme film, Ricki and the Flash, followed by a recurring role on the web series Pretty Dudes alongside such actors as Dion Basco and Yoshi Sudarso.
Sia, in collaboration with former Gearbox Software writer Anthony Burch, created the narrative for the exploration video game Failsafe.