Hosted by New York University's Skirball Center, NYU's Center for Multicultural Education and Programs and the Public Theater, the festival runs through Oct. 11. The festival offers theatregoers the opportunity to catch fully produced productions, workshops, readings and panel discussions on Hip-Hop theatre.

Hip-Hop theatre innovator Danny Hoch (Till the Break of Dawn) will present Taking Over: The All City Tour, which was previously seen at Berkeley Rep. In partnership with the Public Theater, the Festival will stage the work in all five New York City boroughs free of charge. In Taking Over Hoch tackles issues of gentrification.

Also on the schedule is a Hip-Hop "remix" of Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove's Voices: A People's History of the United States. The new presentation is described as "a unique fuse of multi-generational artists and performers, celebrating the courageous participants of history that gave birth to arguably the most powerful generation of Americans yet, the post-civil rights generation of Hip-Hop heads from Chuch D to Eminem."

Marc Bamuthi Joseph's the break/s, described as a "mixtape for the stage," explores the evolution of a Hip-Hop artist through "one man's journey to find himself amid what family, society, and history have told him he is, or should be."

Additional works include Lemon Anderson's County of Kings: The Beautiful Struggle, Cause They Said So!, Boom Bap Meditations, Insanity Isn't the Sixth Vowel and Paradox of the Urban Cliché. For tickets and further information visit HHTF.

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Founded in 2000, the annual Hip-Hop Theater Festival brings together the Hip-Hop generation and those interested in learning more about it in a celebration of the Hip-Hop culture. The non-profit festival has presented over 100 world-renown artists in festivals reaching major metropolitan audiences in Chicago, New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.