Hoch Helms Hip-Hop Theater Festival at NYC’s PS 122 June 14-24 | Playbill

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News Hoch Helms Hip-Hop Theater Festival at NYC’s PS 122 June 14-24 If you’ve set up shop under a rock, you may not have heard of hip-hop. Otherwise, you're likely to have come across this artistic form that has been slowly melting its way into the pot of pop culture. What started out as a just music phenomenon has crossed over into the worlds of fashion and film, and now is exploding full force onto the stage with the first New York City Hip-Hop Theater Festival, June 14-24 at Performance Space 122.

If you’ve set up shop under a rock, you may not have heard of hip-hop. Otherwise, you're likely to have come across this artistic form that has been slowly melting its way into the pot of pop culture. What started out as a just music phenomenon has crossed over into the worlds of fashion and film, and now is exploding full force onto the stage with the first New York City Hip-Hop Theater Festival, June 14-24 at Performance Space 122.

In fashion, names like FUBU and Karl Kani have been known for their hip hop clothing styles. Films like “Belly” and the recent “Romeo Must Die” have starred hip-hop artists like DMX, Nas, and Aaliyah (who herself was in the running for a role in Elton John’s current Broadway hit, Aida.) Now with Sean Couch and Kelly Scott’s Echo Park: A Hip-Hop Musical and the soon-to-close Off-Broadway show, The Bomb-itty of Errors, hip hop theatre is slowly but surely carving its own little corner in the genre.

Thus, announcing its presence, first-time producer Danny Hoch (writer-performer of the OB hit Jails, Hospitals, & Hip-Hop) launches his Hip-Hop theatrefest with artists from all over NYC and the country. The two week festival boasts headliner Sarah Jones with her much acclaimed Surface Transit (see Playbill On-Line’s feature on Jones.) Her show will play at the Second Floor Theatre. The other acts for the two week festival, playing at the First Floor Theatre, are as follows:

June 14 - Rocky LaMontanes' ALL THAT! kicks off the event with host Flaco Navaja. The night of jazz and poetry fusion features Kayo (1998 Nuyorican grand slam champion), Goodfella Mike G (HBO's OZ) and a slew of other names.

June 15 - Rolando Morales in The Last Will and Testament of Willie Shakesperican which merges the worlds of Shakespeare and a Nuyorican (New York Puerto Rican). June 16 - Sleeping Gods: Theater in the Spirit of Hip Hop, a Minneapolis-based collaboration of movement, sound and the words of the youth of the Juvenile Corrections Facility and the Omegon Drug Rehabilitation Center.

June 17 - Latinflava.com presents La Santa Luz Dance Company that assimilates a mesh of dance forms: jazz, modern, ballet, tap, flamenco, African, Latin, urban and the use of sign language.

June 20 - Starting off the second week of performances is the producer himself, Obie-award-winning Danny Hoch, who revisits his most notable work Jails, Hospitals, & Hip-Hop. The show starts at 8 PM.

June 21 - Washington DC’s Hip Hop Theater Junction presents its Rhyme Deferred, a story of two brothers’ struggle between the hip-hop underground and its mainstream commercialization.

June 22 - Toni Blackman, Psalmayene 24 & DJ Munch star in their The Hip Hop Nightmares of Jujube Brown, a journey play that takes us through the life of a cop-killer.

June 23 - Slanguage by Universes, the troupe of 5 multi-disciplined performers who mix poetry, theater, jazz, hip-hop, politics, blues and Spanish boleros to create their own style of theatre.

June 24 - And closing the festival, The Gathering: A Hip Hop Journey to the Meeting Places of Black Men, written and performed by one-man sensation, Will Power.

Following the festival, Liza Colon-Zayas will take over the First Floor Theatre with her Sistah Supreme. Directed by Stephen Adly Guirgis, the comedy portrays the fears encountered by a young Puerto Rican girl and her mother living in the projects. Sistah runs June 28 - August 26, along with Jones’ Transit.

All performances are $15 and start at 7:30 PM, with the exception of Danny Hoch’s Jails, June 20 at 8PM. Festival passes are available for $100. Tickets can be purchased at PS 122, 150 First Avenue (at 9th Street), by calling (212) 477-5288, or online at www.ps122.org. For more information on the festival, visit www.hiphop-theaterfest.com

-- by Ernio Hernandez

 
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