What are Hip Hop Musicals About?
As the artistic director of a hip hop theater collective I get plays emailed to me that the playwright wants me to produce. Before I read them I will first check to see if the play is told with hip hop music, or is somehow connected to the hip hop community in some way. If it is, then I’ll start to read it.
I say start to read instead of read all the way through because some hip hop plays or musicals use hip hop as a gimmick. Those don’t interest me and I stop reading the minute I realize that.
Hip Hop Music in a Musical
In the late fifties the new music was rock and roll. It was a reaction to the staid boring times. The music was wild, rebellious, and loud. In theater it was used, when it was used at all, to create that sense of rebellion that it reflected in real life – like in the musical HAIR. (Film was a different story. The movies, especially the beach party movies, violated the spirit of the music.)
I stop reading hip hop theater works when they violate the spirit of the music. Hip hop arose as a reaction to a culture of oppression. The subject of hip hop theater needs to be the same. “Frankie and Annette rap” does not have the appropriate subject, the appropriate feeling connected with it thematically. Americans overthrowing British tyranny, however, as used in HAMILTON, does.
When you think about sending your play or musical to Rhymes Over Beats, make sure it’s about a subject that respects the culture that created Hip Hop music in the first place.