After a successful run at the top of the year Revenge of a King returns to the Black Theater Troupe in Pheonix Arizona from April 23rd to May 10th. The production is presented in association with Black Poet Ventures. And as an added bonus, this production was invited to the National Black Theater Festival in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. This will be the second trip for Revenge at the festival where it was presented earlier in 2007 with a production by Loaves and Fish and Penn State University. Congrats to the cast and crew. And if you are in the area, be sure to check it out. A multicultural Hiphop musical featuring original music, freestyle rhymes, an MC battle, graffiti, dance and a live DJ. Hamlet, one of the most recognizable tragedies in Shakespeare’s theatrical canon has been transplanted from Denmark to the streets of urban America. In this retelling, Hamilton L. King, an aspiring hip-hop artist, struggles to overcome his father’s mysterious death while simultaneously learning to accept his mother’s untimely marriage. Confusion, doubt and thoughts of retribution take over as new elements unfold leading him down a path of self-destruction.
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Curtains: BlackPoet Ventures and Black Theatre Troupe's Revenge of a KingBy Julie PetersonMessing with Shakespeare can be a very good thing. It introduces audiences to a variety of genres and styles of theater that they might have overlooked or avoided in the past. The cross-pollination runs in all directions; for example, in the current Black Theatre Troupe/ BlackPoet Ventures co-production, Revenge of a King, it's impossible to say who's getting more out of the Hamlet-centric, hip-hop styled show -- people who are being introduced to Shakespeare through the relevant avenues of contemporary music, dance, graffiti art, and performance poetry; big ol' Shakespeare geeks like me who get to appreciate the old messages expressed in newer genres; or people like my pal the dance/drama teacher and her son, who are familiar with both frames of reference and are simply delighted to see so many of their personal favorite things on stage together ("Hey! You got chocolate in my peanut butter!"). The show also crosses generational and cultural lines, speaking to the drives of passion and integrity that war inside people of every age, noting the toll of a violent culture on parents and children alike, calling out the antisocial messages of some urban role models, and presenting alternative objectives for community action. It's very cool. Jeff Lemire's scenic design is a realistically gritty two-level brick-faced unit adorned with appropriate graffiti messages by Ernie Perazza and the staff of Just Blaze. Michael J. Eddy's lighting design tracks and flashes on the painted words now and then, and rather than being corny, it reinforces the themes of the story from moment to moment, the way production elements are supposed to. Upstairs, Jason Yee and Divine inject mood and commentary from a broadcast/DJ booth, and the whole set is constructed far downstage to heighten the sense of urgency in the unfolding events. One of the interesting things about the original live music in the show (and there's a bunch; it's basically a musical) is that the male performers tend to spit rhymes (they are diverse and character-focused pieces) while the women, in their solos, are singing melodies -- which is traditional, I realize. Shakespeare was good (usually) at letting his female characters express some of the frustration of their circumscribed social role, and the songs in Revenge of a King, in addition to being beautifully and poignantly performed, serve that function by repeating simple phrases over and over at an increasing emotional pitch. It's a style that took me a while to get used to, but it worked its magic in the end by deepening my engagement in the visceral experience of the play. Hamlet is seen as (among other things) a portrait of a man paralyzed by intellectual, civilized constraints, but Revenge of a King takes the very natural step of digging under the surface to identify the stifling circumstances that keep the characters from breaking out of their tragic spirals.
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Revenge of a KingPresented by:Loaves and Fish Repertory Theater Company at the New York International Fringe Festival nytheatre.com reviewTim Cusack · August 13, 2006Aight, Imma gonna check it right here, right now—go see this show. As in drag your sorry mouse up to your bookmarked websites, click on FringeNYC.org, and order your tickets. IMMEDIATELY. Because a show like Revenge of a King is the REASON the Fringe exists. Is it perfect? No. Is it the most polished theatrical spectacle I've ever seen? No. But it's whip smart, outrageously funny, rooted in the specificities of language and mores of its community, devastating in its emotional power, full of heart, and sheds new illumination on the most overanalyzed play in all of English literature. Now are you convinced? Go ahead. I'll wait right here for you while you buy your tickets. Done? Good. Now I'll tell you why I liked this show so much—it made me damn glad to be alive. It gave me hope for the future of theatre in this country. It moved me to see Herb Newsome, the adaptor, star, and choreographer kicking serious derriere in all three domains—a direct rebuke to an institutional culture that demands specialization from its artists. And this show has something important to say about the condition of Black folks in our society and manages to say it using the story of Hamlet—the ultimate neurotic white guy. Oh, yeah, and it's a show geared towards kids that adults will find engaging. Now that's what I call theatrical alchemy. Transposing the action from Elsinore to the fictitious Denmark Avenue in what appears to be Brooklyn, Revenge of a King focuses on Hamilton King (Newsome), the scion of a powerful political dynasty (think Major Owens). But the King family isn't living some bougie Cosby dream—they're still in the ghetto, hanging with the local street gangs and taking part in block parties. When Hamilton's mother marries the oily Jean Claude Rameau (the marvelous James Edward Lee) after her husband's death, the audience instinctively understands, given how small and insular this world is, how impossible it is for Hamilton to protest or raise a stink. With the exception of a subplot involving a murdered campaign intern that upon closer examination only muddies the story, Newsome's adaptation is razor sharp and moves like lightning, condensing Shakespeare's action into one dreadful weekend in the 'hood. This is the first production I've seen where Hamlet's youth is rendered convincingly—not to mention his rage. It's also the most moving depiction of Ophelia's memorial service I can remember. And his idea to transform the play-within-a-play into a freestyle rap showdown is nothing less than a stroke of genius. Abetted by the machine-gun delivery of Glenn Gordon's MCing, Newsome injects a shot of dramaturgical Viagra into the tiredest climax in post-Renaissance theatre. But after all, it's his language, like the Bard's, that continually amazes. I'd make a clumsy attempt to quote his raps, but that would be beyond lame. Suffice to say, all of Hamlet's greatest soliloquized hits are here, but like the very best hip-hop tracks, Newsome takes tunes we've heard thousands of times before, and through sheer skill and imagination, cuts them up and remixes them into something new and astonishing.
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Young & Gifted: Festival to showcase three productions by college students Winston –Salem Journal Sunday, July 29, 2007 By Ken Keuffel JOURNAL REPORTER Steve Broadnax teaches acting and African-American drama at Penn State University. He also travels far and wide. He attended the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland several years ago and saw one of Shakespeare’s comedies done in hip-hop style. That gave him an idea - transform Shakespeare’s Hamlet into a similar tale of a different name, using such hip-hop elements as break-dancing and rap. “It (rap) is poetry,” said Broadnax, a longtime fan of hip-hop theater. “It’s heightened language. It’s similar to what Shakespeare would want now, the voice of the day.” Broadnax’s idea has become a reality. He is now directing a show called Revenge of a King, which was written by a friend, Herb Newsome, a former graduate student in acting at Penn State. Students and alumni from Penn State will present Revenge twice on Friday in the Marriott Ballroom, as part of the National Black Theatre Festival. The performance will be one of three at the festival from a university or college… Patrons who take in the festival’s college-grown shows get to see some amateur talents begin to blossom into professionals. They also become acquainted with new and not-so-new work incubating on college campuses. In the case of Revenge, this retains the basic storyline of Hamlet, extracting from it such themes as revenge (Hamlet avenges his father’s death), the battle of the sexes, death and loss. “I think it’s great for those people who are Shakespeare enthusiasts and know the play,” Newsome said. “They’ll get it and see the connection. And even for those who aren’t into Shakespeare and who haven’t read Hamlet - they’ll be able to still come to the show and get the story and enjoy it and take what they can from it.”
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'Hamlet' goes hip-hop To be or not to be - That is the question Of this life lesson That testin' me... It's not exactly Shakespeare - and that's the point of contemporary hip-hop drama "Revenge of the King," inspired by Shakespeare's "Hamlet." "Revenge" has earned strong reviews at the New York International Fringe Festival and the National Black Theatre Festival in Winston-Salem, N.C. The 11-member company comes to the Carnegie for three performances next weekend, presented by Cincinnati Black Theatre Company. There are four elements that make a play hip-hop, says Herb Newsome, who conceived the show, directs the Carnegie production and plays Horatio, best friend of troubled hero Hamilton King. "MC-ing, DJ-ing, break dance and graffiti," Newsome explains, is the starting point for "theater for us, by us and available to us," he says, borrowing a quote from Amiri Baraka. There is a world of young adults who don't go to theater and who have no idea that Shakespeare can speak to them. So Newsome provides the translation. "When I was in high school, I couldn't understand Shakespeare for nothing," he says with a laugh now. As a theater student at Penn State (class of 2002), Newsome became well-acquainted with the Bard. For "Revenge" he loses most of the language and keeps what he says is "a great story" about a fine young hero who is torn by his father's mysterious death, his mother's quick remarriage and his need to avenge a misdeed. Newsome moves the action in "Revenge" from Denmark to Denmark Avenue in the South Bronx. Instead of a royal family there is a political family named King; Shakespeare's pivotal play-within-a-play ("The play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.") becomes an MC battle at a block party. "Young people today are finding new ways to express themselves in the theater world," Newsome says and quotes writer/performer Psalmayene: "Theater is a reflection of the culture. If it's jazz time you're gonna have jazz plays. We're bridging the gap between youth and our elders and the momentum is going to continue to build."
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The Daily Collegian Hip-hop, Shakespeare to collide By Stacey Federoff Collegian Staff Writer September 21, 2007 It seems nothing could be more different than Shakespeare and hip-hop, but maybe that's why the subjects make such a good pairing. The hip-hop theatre piece Revenge of a King, being performed this weekend at the State Theatre, 130 W. College Ave., is a retelling of William Shakespeare's Hamlet, including a live DJ, dance, graffiti, spoken word and freestyle rhymes. Director Steve Broadnax, professor in the School of Theatre, said the action of the piece is driven by the same themes in Shakespeare: death, sex and revenge. "The basic dramatic action of Hamlet is about a dutiful revenge," he said, "We've set it in another time, but the action is from Hamlet." Instead of being set in Denmark, the action happens on Denmark Avenue in New York City, and instead of using traditional character names, Hamlet becomes Hamilton and Ophelia becomes Afi Parker. The famous "To be or not to be ... " soliloquy was translated into freestyle rhymes by the show's writer, Herb Newsome, Class of 2002. After Broadnax was inspired by a Shakespeare adaptation he saw in 2002, he came to Newsome with the idea of an adaptation of Hamlet while both were enrolled in Penn State's graduate theatre program. "I just thought, 'Hamlet would be a great opportunity for hip-hop theatre'," Broadnax said. Broadnax added that he is glad he could bring the show to Penn State with the cooperation of the School of Theatre and the State Theatre downtown. "We wanted the Penn State community to see what truly derived from Penn State," he said. Joe Apfelbaum, programming manager of the State Theatre, said once Broadnax brought the idea to the theater, it didn't take much convincing to allow the performance. "We just thought it was really cool, educational, cross-cultural and modern," Apfelbaum said. Crystal Endsley, interim assistant director of the Paul Robeson Center and member of the cast, said she is glad the school can cooperate with State College. "We're trying to build a bridge with the institution and the community," she said. Her character, a radio station host, acts as the inner monologue of the lead female character. "It's done to give voice to the women of color and tell what the lead female role is thinking," Endsley said. She said working with the rest of the cast has been a great experience and the nature of the show has allowed the cast to truly make its mark on Revenge. The first production of the show was in 2004 at the University of Arkansas and has since been performed five other times, once in a high school in the Bronx. Broadnax is making plans to tour South Africa with the current cast and perform in New York once again and San Diego.
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What is Hip Hop Theater? By Herb Newsome The phenomenon of Hip-Hop has been growing steadily in America over the last three decades, and has invaded nearly every facet of our society. What began as a movement, started in the inner city of the South Bronx in the late seventies, Hip-Hop culture has expanded to the suburbs, small town America and eventually the world. Elements of its culture have been showing up in commercials, film, television, advertising, mainstream radio, fashion, sports and just about every facet of American culture; and the theatre is no exception. With its elemental roots present in shows like Bring in Da’ Noise, Bring in Da’ Funk to the inauguration of the annual Hip-Hop Theatre Festival, a new genre of theatre has emerged and is steadily gaining ground. It has even been recognized as a specific category at the National Black Theatre Festival in Winston-Salem N.C. In order to answer the question “What is Hip-Hop theatre?” we must first take a brief look at the origins of Hip-Hop and its fundamental elements. The roots of Hip-Hop were planted in the early seventies in the South Bronx, N.Y.C. At this time, Disco dominated the music scene and young urban kids were finding it hard to relate to this kind of music. It didn’t appeal to their sensibilities or the world in which they lived and so they began to find new ways of expressing themselves. Clive Campbell (a.k.a. Cool Herc) a local DJ “noticed that funk, ‘the quintessential black sound’, elicited a much greater crowd reaction in the predominantly Black and Hispanic community”. During the instrumental breaks of these songs people appeared to go wild and Campbell got the idea to extend the break by having two records cut back and forth from one another, and thus invented the breakbeat. These breakbeats allowed for people to express themselves through dance. The new style of dance that formed became known as Breakdancing. MC’s (masters of ceremony) began to place lyrics on top of the breakbeats in the form of poetic rhyming. These new forms of expression were appearing at block parties all over the city. DJ’s spinning the latest cuts, B-Boys dancing, MC’s doing battle, and Graffiti artists leaving their mark were typical of your average party. Thus, these four elements of DJing, MCing, Breakdancing, and Graffiti formed the foundation of Hip-Hop. Hip-Hop began as a form of musical expression and later developed into much more. The rap artist KRS-1, who is one of the most influential members of the Hip-Hop community, tells of how Hip-Hop has grown to mean much more to the people who are truly defined by it: Welcome to Hip-Hop culture, where DJing, MCing, Graffiti Art, Breakdancing and the philosophies are expressed everyday within the inner cities of America, and the world. You are not doing Hip-Hop, you are Hip-Hop. Love yourself and your expressions, you can’t go wrong… -From KRS-1’s I Got Next album When Hip-Hop becomes a person’s being, then they need to express who and what they are. Danny Hoch, actor, writer and founder of the First Annual Hip-Hop Theatre Festival feels, “There’s a generation of Hip-Hop kids that have gone to theatre school. And a lot of us, we don’t want to do Shakespeare anymore. Our stories that are really about us are not being told unless we tell them.” Young people today are finding new ways to express themselves in the theatre world, a world similar to the music scene in the seventies, which seems to exclude them. Psalmayene, a writer/performer suggests, “It’s really an organic movement for Hip-Hop to go into the theatre and theatre to go into Hip-Hop. Theatre is a reflection of the culture. If it’s jazz time, you’re gonna have jazz plays. We’re bridging the gap between youth and our elders, and the momentum is going to continue to build”. What are the criteria for this new form of theatre? By simply adding elements of Hip-Hop culture to a play, can it then be defined as Hip-Hop theatre? The foundation for the definition seems to go back to the four basic elements of Hip-Hop: DJing, MCing, Breakdancing, and Graffiti. However, there is no one exact definition for this new and exciting genre, as evident by the differing opinions of two of the genre’s most dynamic performers: Will Power and Sarah Jones. In an article entitled, “Hip-Hop Theatre: The New Underground”, the two offer their ideas on how they define the genre. Will Power, writer and performer of The Gathering, echoes these sentiments. He believes “What distinguishes Hip-Hop theatre is the form, taking breakdancing and rhyming and using that, as opposed to just playing a character who happens to be a B-Boy”. Sara Jones, a poet/actor/writer and headliner at the first Annual Hip-Hop Theatre Festival in New York, goes even further. She feels that in defining the genre, you must be careful not to confine yourself to the four basic principles because that can be limiting to the potential of what Hip-Hop has become. Others have offered their opinion on what is contained in Hip-Hop Theatre. Iman Shabazz, an actor/ creator of Ndangered states, “Hip-Hop is not just emcee-ing or b-boying or graffiti artists. It’s an amalgamation of all those things as different expressions of youth”. Rap music has been a form of expression for those raised on Hip-Hop to let out the meaning of what is going on inside of them. Playwright Robert Alexander concludes that Hip-Hop theatre is “Theatre informed by the sensibilities of rap music… for something to be truly a Hip-Hop theatre piece it has to contain certain elements of schizophrenia and rebellion, creativity and destruction. There has to be a marriage between hell and heaven, light and dark, revolution and complacency and all of our various contradictions, whether it’s a performance piece or a traditional play with dialogue”. Hip-Hop formed out of the need for inner-city youth to seek a form of expression that was their own. In doing so, they began to rebel against the old standard, to create and expand upon these new forms of expression. What started with four elements, DJing, MCing, Breakdancing, and Graffiti, Hip-Hop has been steadily growing since its inception in the 70’s and changing to become, as KRS-1 states, a lifestyle. With its own music, fashion and language, these elements can totally define the essence of a generation. Out of this new lifestyle evolved stories, which are specific to the people living in it. All of these ideas form the basis for what Hip-Hop theatre has become: theatre formed by the Hip-Hop sensibility, as stated by Rickerby Hinds. “I see a connection between the Black Arts Movement of the sixties and Hip-Hop theatre because Amiri Baraka was so specific in his definition: theatre by us, for us, and available to us. It’s just more inclusive now, to include Latinos, Asians, and White kids who have the Hip-Hop sensibility”. In his book entitled Blues People Baraka defines what a music can mean to a group of people, specifically Negroes. By substituting the word ‘Negro’ for the term ‘Hip-Hop generation’, his definition suits the essence of what Hip-Hop music and theatre can be. He states, “The most expressive Negro music of any given period will be an exact reflection of what the Negro himself is. It will be a portrait of the Negro in America at that particular time. Who he thinks he is, what he thinks America or the world to be, given the circumstances, prejudices, and delights of that particular America. Negro music and Negro life in America were always the result of a reaction to, and adaptation of, whatever America Negroes were given or could secure for themselves” It is that idea of “theatre for us and by us” that prompted Danny Hoch, and Kamilah Forbes, to create the first Annual Hip-Hop Theatre Festival in New York City with the hope of bringing Hip-Hop theatre to those for whom it was written. Bruce Weber, critic for the The New York Times outlines the goals of the festival: “ to further the natural expansion of Hip-Hop into theatre, to prove to the well established audience for rap music, for instance, that theatre can talk their talk and walk their walk…It’s dedicated to encouraging the production of new theatrical works… building an audience for them.
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