Sampling And Remixing Blackness In Hip Hop Theater And Performance

Explores expressions of Blackness in Hip-Hop performance by non-African American artists

Hip-Hop culture's explosive arrival on the art scene of New York in the boroughs of Queens and the Bronx in the 1970s began to influence all aspects of musical theater from singing to scenic design. Hip-Hop in Musical Theatre takes an intersectional standpoint to explore Hip-Hop's influence on musical theater practice and aesthetics by giving the reader a comprehensive map of musical theater productions that have been impacted by Hip-Hop music and culture. Offering insightful briefs on musical theater productions that contain aesthetic, musical and embodied references to the global phenomenon of Hip-hop culture, this volume takes the reader through a virtual tour of Hip-Hop's influence on American musical theater. From early traces of hip-hop's rap scene in the 1970s that appeared in musicals such as Micki Grant's Tony Award nominated Don't Bother Me I Can't Cope (1971) and Broadway smash hits such as The Wiz (1974) to international juggernauts such as Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton (2015), this introductory book decodes the sights and sounds of Hip-Hop culture within the socio-cultural context in which the musicals are produced. Published in the Topics in Musical Theatre series this volume presents fact-filled and insightful summaries of musicals that give the reader a snapshot of the musical and narrative content while highlighting which aspect of the music and culture of Hip-Hop informs acting, dancing, singing, design, and music in the selected musical while offering insightful analysis on the ways that hip-hop styles and politics have changed the shape of musical theater practice.

This Companion covers the hip-hop elements, methods of studying hip-hop, and case studies from Nerdcore to Turkish-German and Japanese hip-hop.

As the nature of contemporary performance continues to expand into new forms, genres and media, it requires an increasingly diverse vocabulary. Reading Contemporary Performance provides students, critics and creators with a rich understanding of the key terms and ideas that are central to any discussion of this evolving theatricality. Specially commissioned entries from a wealth of contributors map out the many and varied ways of discussing performance in all of its forms – from theatrical and site-specific performances to live and New Media art. The book is divided into two sections: Concepts - Key terms and ideas arranged according to the five characteristic elements of performance art: time; space; action; performer; audience. Methodologies and Turning Points - The seminal theories and ways of reading performance, such as postmodernism, epic theatre, feminisms, happenings and animal studies. Case Studies – entries in both sections are accompanied by short studies of specific performances and events, demonstrating creative examples of the ideas and issues in question. Three different introductory essays provide multiple entry points into the discussion of contemporary performance, and cross-references for each entry also allow the plotting of one’s own pathway. Reading Contemporary Performance is an invaluable guide, providing not just a solid set of familiarities, but an exploration and contextualisation of this broad and vital field.

The first African American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama, Suzan-Lori Parks has received international recognition for her provocative and influential works. Her plays capture the nightmares of African Americans endangered by a white establishment determined to erase their history and eradicate their dreams. A dozen essays address Parks's plays, screenplays and novel. Additionally, this book includes two original interviews (one with Parks and another with her long-time director Liz Diamond) and a production chronology of her plays.

Remixing the ritual establishes a framework for Hip Hop, sets context in the Black arts movement, examines Americas legacy of minstrelsy vs commercial Rap, and arrives at the intersection of Hip Hop and theatre. This intersection is explored in practice by Boom Bap Meditations, a solo Hip Hop Theatre show written and performed by Baba Israel. The book documents its creative process and script. Baba Israel's background as Hip Hop Theater artist, educator, member of the Playback Theater community, and child of The Living Theater provide the thru line for this journey.

Finalist for The Barnard Hewitt Award for Outstanding Research in Theatre History, given by the American Society for Theatre Research. Silver Medal Winner of The Victor Villaseñor Best Latino Focused Non-Fiction Book Award, given by the International Latino Book Awards. Honorable Mention for the Best LGBTQ+ Themed Book, given by the International Latino Book Awards. A queer genealogy of the famous performance space and the nuyorican aesthetic One could easily overlook the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, a small, unassuming performance venue on New York City’s Lower East Side. Yet the space once hosted the likes of Victor Hernández Cruz, Allen Ginsberg, and Amiri Baraka and is widely credited as the homespace for the emergent nuyorican literary and aesthetic movement of the 1990s. Founded by a group of counterculturalist Puerto Rican immigrants and artists in the 1970s, the space slowly transformed the Puerto Rican ethnic and cultural associations of the epithet “Nuyorican,” as the Cafe developed into a central hub for an artistic movement encompassing queer, trans, and diasporic performance. The Queer Nuyorican is the first queer genealogy and critical study of the historical, political, and cultural conditions under which the term “Nuyorican” shifted from a raced/ethnic identity marker to “nuyorican,” an aesthetic practice. The nuyorican aesthetic recognizes and includes queer poets and performers of color whose writing and performance build upon the politics inherent in the Cafe’s founding. Initially situated within the Cafe’s physical space and countercultural discursive history, the nuyorican aesthetic extends beyond these gendered and ethnic boundaries, broadening the ethnic marker Nuyorican to include queer, trans, and diasporic performance modalities. Hip-hop studies, alongside critical race, queer, literary, and performance theories, are used to document the interventions made by queer and trans artists of color—Miguel Piñero, Regie Cabico, Glam Slam participants, and Ellison Glenn/Black Cracker—whose works demonstrate how the Nuyorican Poets Cafe has operated as a queer space since its founding. In focusing on artists who began their careers as spoken word artists and slam poets at the Cafe, The Queer Nuyorican examines queer modes of circulation that are tethered to the increasing visibility, commodification, and normalization of spoken word, slam poetry, and hip-hop theater in the United States and abroad.

The first book-length study of one of the most essential elements of hip-hop: musical borrowing