The Off-Broadway production of Till the Break of Dawn marks the first commercial production of Hip-Hop in straight-play form. Culture Project artistic director, Alan Buchman, said in a recent statement, "With this play, Danny Hoch brings his considerable genius to the stage as eleven actors portray characters we have grown to know and love. In Till The Break of Dawn, the brash outcry of today's injustice meets the weathered heroes of yesterday's resistance movement in, where else, but Cuba?" Dawn is the Hip-Hop theatre pioneer's first new work to be presented to New York audiences since 1998. Hoch directs his work that centers on "Gibran, an internet Hip-Hop activist, [who] leads a group of his New York friends on a trip to Havana to attend a festival. They've always been radical at home, but in Cuba, radical means something else. So does Hip-Hop, and so do they," according to press notes.

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At left (from top): Playwright Danny Hoch; Nilaja Sun; Matthew-Lee Erlbach; Jimmie James; Annabella Sciorra and artistic director Allen Buchman; pattydukes; Rephstar; and Maribel Lizardo.

photos by Aubrey Reuben