Hip Hop Not “Real” Theater?
I was reading one of the theater discussion boards I follow this week, talkinbroadway.com, and one conversation particularly interested me. It was on one person shows, and whether they can be considered “real” theater.
Since I hear all the time, similar comments about what Rhymes Over Beats is trying to do, that hip hop theater is not “real” theater, I thought to make what is “real theater” the subject of this blog.
It’s argued that one person shows are not “real theater” because theater is conflict and you can’t have conflict with just one person. I’m guessing that the people who think this have never seen a cartoon of one person with a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other, or watched the old man battling the impersonal force of nature – the sea.
The objections to hip hop, especially in musical theater, revolve around melody.
Hip hop is percussive rather than melodic, and some people think theater can only be “real” if you can hum it. According to them, only one kind of music is “appropriate” for musical theater. They forget that Showboat eventually replaced The Vagabond King.
Times Change
The impulse behind the idea that there is a “real theater” style is the notion that things have an essence. The essence is what makes a thing what it is.
The problem is that things change.
Theater was once written in verse, not prose. I can imagine at sometime in the past saying, “This can’t be theater, the words don’t rhyme.” The person who thought that there was something essential in theater, a specific style that musical theater is defined by, was wrong then and they are wrong now.
You may be wondering if there is a combination of a one person show and hip hop that makes a really excellent work of theater?
I’d suggest you check out Lemon Andersen’s County of Kings. It is a wonderful hip hop one person show.