Hip Hop Theater Defined
by Patrick Blake
Hip Hop Theater According to Us
This first group of blog posts are intended to explain:
- why we are
- what we are
- our plan to accomplish our goals, and
- what we hope to accomplish, or “What the world of theater will be like if we do what I hope we’ll do.”
- And, later I want to use them as a way of commenting on what is going on in both hip hop and theater, and in the world in general.
Last week I talked about why: why we want to do hip hop theater. This week I want to talk about what it is.
What is Hip Hop Theater?
Everyone is aware of the elements of Hip Hop: DJ, MC, B-boy, Graffiti.
But what is (or rather what are) the elements of Hip Hop Theater?
Once I was describing a play Rhymes Over Beats was going to do. I was asked, “How can you call this play Hip Hop? No one raps in it?”
“Rap is something you do. Hip Hop is something you live.”
When I get asked questions like that, the famous KRS-One quote immediately comes to mind: “Rap is something you do. Hip Hop is something you live.”
Of the four elements of Hip Hop only one involves rapping. The others involve, and grew out of, the experience of living in a particular community at a particular time.
Theater can be Hip Hop even when there is no rap involved, as long as it gets its inspiration from the community. That’s why Hip Hop Theater includes plays as well as musicals.
Issue of Translation
When I first started to talk to people in the Hip Hop community about theater, I ran into problems. I’d be asked what I did. When I said I was a producer, there were misunderstandings.
A producer is a different job in hip hop than it is in theater. I realized that I needed to translate from hip hop to theater, and back. Not only for different jobs with the same name, but for the same job with different names.
Bboy = Choreographer
I came up with the start of a translation table. For things that are called the same but are different, you add the art form as a prefix. Theater producer. Hip hop producer.
For things that have different names, but are really the same thing, I suggest this:
- DJ performs a similar role in hip hop that a musical director does in theater.
- B-boys are the choreographers.
- MCs are the playwrights/lyricists and since they can write Beats, composers.
- Designers are represented by Graffiti writers.
It’s off the cuff, tentative and only a beginning. I’m not sure about everyone, but that’s what the comment section of the blog is for, so please let me know what you think.
So what is Hip Hop Theater?
Originally I thought that Hip hop theater is theater that uses the elements of Hip Hop in service of telling a story.
I no longer think that is complete, or even central to what hip hop theater is.
For my more traditional theater friends, I seem to have become their hip hop expert. I get invited to see a lot of shows that are described to me as the next “Hamilton”. They’re not. They are more “Frankie and Annette rap on the beach”.
If you think hip hop is a fad where you can make a quick buck by jumping on the bandwagon, you are not doing hip hop theater.
ABCs of Hip Hop Theater
I started thinking about what hip hop is at its core. What it is that you live. I have these suggestions for the ABCs of Hip Hop Theater:
- Theater is hip hop when the attitude it expresses and represents is authentic. Theater that tells things the way they are. Where everyone is not a maid or a gangster, but whatever they are, they swagger.
- Beats. No matter what else the community that produced hip hop is, it is alive. It moves. Like a heart it beats. So does Hip Hop Theater – it beats.
- Theater is hip hop when it is of, by, and for the community. Not only because it shows the community fully and authentically, but also because it is a part of the community. Performing, teaching and mentoring are only the start. Hip Hop Theater fully participates in the life of the community.
If it’s theater that is authentic, has beats, and is connected to the community, it’s Hip Hop Theater.
And that’s the type of theater Rhymes Over Beats is doing.