Hip Hop Theater & Danny Hoch’s Taking Over Arena

posted by Jamie Gahlon

From Thursday, Nov. 29 to Saturday, Dec. 1, Arena Stage and Georgetown University’s Program in Performing Arts will present a workshop production of Taking Over, a new solo show written and performed by Danny Hoch, and directed by Tony Taccone of Berkeley Repertory Theater. For show and ticketing information, check out the Georgetown Program in Performing Arts website.

I have the incredible opportunity of stepping outside of my normal Arena hats (Human Resources Associate/Executive Director Intern) to line produce for the workshop, and I couldn’t be more excited. I first heard about Danny Hoch and his work last year through research I conducted on Hip Hop Theater for a Political Theater class I was enrolled in at Georgetown. What is Hip Hop Theater, you ask?

For those of you who don’t know, Danny Hoch founded the first Hip Hop Theater Festival in 2000 and is considered one of the fathers and most formidable creators and contributors to the Hip Hop Theater genre. Hip Hop Theater uses theater as a medium for hip hop, combining intrinsically theatrical hip hop elements such as rap, singing, break dancing, spoken word, beat-boxing and spinning records with theater. The Hip Hop Theater movement really got off the ground in the ‘90s, emerging largely through trained theater artists who grew up in and were influenced by hip hop culture.

In 1998, Danny had already created his own Off-Broadway hit called Jails, Hospitals, and Hip Hop when he saw Sarah Jones’ solo show, titled Surface Transit. Hoch found a kindred spirit in Jones and saw thematic similarities in their shows so much so that he got Surface Transit booked for a longer engagement at P.S. 122 that summer. In the meantime, Danny contacted everyone he knew who was already involved in hip hop theater and organized a festival that is now the foundation for the international movement that is Hip Hop Theater. We are so lucky to have him!

Here’s what Danny has to say about the festival:

“What I'm trying to do with the festival is change the context of theatergoing, no matter who is onstage. Unfortunately, when people think of hip-hop, they just think of rap music. But hip-hop theater is theater about, by and for the hip-hop generation. It doesn't have to be about rapping or break dancing. In other words, according to the powers that be, hip-hop can only exist in a rap video. But it exists on a myriad of levels, and hip-hop culture, politics, and social thought are not just about rap. All of those things go into hip-hop theater."

"The goal of the festival is to nurture our own theater world… We are trying to cultivate a mixed audience, not for the sake of being mixed, but because the hip-hop generation is a generation that has grown up with multiculturalism in practice, not as an academic thought—we live it every day, and our audience should reflect that."

Here’s a little more about Danny:

Danny Hoch is an actor, playwright and director whose plays Pot Melting, Some People and Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop have garnered many awards including two OBIES, an NEA Solo Theatre Fellowship, Sundance Writers Fellowship, CalArts/Alpert Award In Theatre and a Tennessee Williams Fellowship. His theater work has toured to 50 U.S. cities and 15 countries. He is a Senior Fellow at the New School’s Vera List Center For Art & Politics and his writings on hip-hop, race and class have appeared in The Village Voice, New York Times, Harper's, The Nation, American Theatre and various books: Out Of Character, Extreme Exposure, Laughing In The Dark, Creating Your Own Monologue and Total Chaos. His book Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop is in its second printing by Villard Books/Random House.

His writing and acting credits for TV and film include Bamboozled, Washington Heights, Prison Song, Subway Stories, Thin Red Line, Whiteboys, Blackhawk Down, American Splendor, War Of The Worlds, Lucky You, HBO Def Poetry and he stars alongside Joaquin Phoenix, Robert Duvall, Eva Mendes and Mark Wahlberg in the upcoming We Own The Night and also HBO’s new series Wyclef Jean In America. Danny’s own Some People (HBO) and the movie Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop were recently released on DVD.

Mr. Hoch founded the Hip-Hop Theater Festival in 2000, which has since presented over 75 hip-hop generation plays from all over the world and now appears annually in New York, Chicago, D.C. and San Francisco/Oakland. He directed Will Power's hit show Flow at New York Theatre Workshop, as well as the bilingual Representa at the the San Francisco International Arts Festival. Mr. Hoch is the recipient of a 2006 Creative Capital Grant and the 2007 Sundance Theatre Lab’s Playwright-In-Residence. He sits on the board of Theatre Communications Group and the Hip-Hop Theatre Festival. His new epic play Till The Break Of Dawn opened this last September in New York, produced by The Culture Project at Abrons Arts Center.

If you want more info on Danny and Hip Hop Theater, check out his website.

Please stay tuned for more show information and updates from on the ground—I promise this isn’t one you want to miss!