Hip-Hop Theater Festival Brings Art and Culture Home to New York City

– Hip-Hop Theater Festival (HHTF) returns to its roots with a uniquely entertaining presentation that bridges the gap between the art, culture, and music of Hip-Hop from September 23 – October 11.  Teaming with New York University’s (NYU) Skirball Center, NYU’s Center for Multicultural Education and Programs, the Public Theater and several collaborators across New York City, the Hip-Hop Theater Festival aims to showcase the artistic form of Hip-Hop culture through fully-produced theater works, staged readings, educational panels, dance showcases and workshops.

 

In collaboration with NYU’s Skirball Center, the Hip-Hop Theater Festival opens with renowned poet and spoken word artist Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s much-anticipated the break/s. Inspired by Jeff Chang’s 2005 award winning Can’t Stop Won’t Stop which captures the creation of Hip-Hop as a local, political and artistic movement and based on Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s international travels, the break/s is a breakthrough multimedia performance that explores the artist’s emergence in a time of Hip-Hop globalization and trans-nationalism.

 

For the first time, Hip-Hop Theater Festival has partnered with the Public Theater to present an unprecendented tour across all five boroughs free of charge. In the play Taking Over, Hip-Hop Theater Festival founder and award-winning actor Danny Hoch takes on gentrification through nine expertly performed roles. As a native New Yorker who has witnessed firsthand the many colors, complexities and contradictions that reflect gentrification, Mr. Hoch presents a unique forum for thought and discussion. Yielding top-notch reviews from its run at the Berkeley Repertory Theater, Mr. Hoch shares his multi-faceted experience with gentrification with his New York neighbors.

 

The Hip-Hop Theater Festival will also present the Hip-Hop remix of Voices: A Peoples History of the United States. The Voices project is a unique collaboration between Anthony Arnove and Howard Zinn, the authors of Voices and HHTF, as they set to ignite and honor the voices from America’s progressive history of activism as read by some of today’s hottest talent from the Hip-Hop generation. Uniquely fashioned as a night of theater, this one time event promises to be 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.

 

With this year’s Style Masters, the Hip-Hop Theater Festival evolves into another realm of arts and culture. Hosted by NYU’s Skirball Center and curated by Alan Ket, an avid collector, historian and practitioner, Style Masters is a visual-arts exhibit celebrating the pioneering artists that have helped to shape the worldwide public art phenomenon known as graffiti. Style Masters intends to recognize and highlight the global contributions made by local NYC based artists such as PART ONE, CHAIN 3, T-KID 170 and NOC 167, while making an effort to preserve work that should not be forgotten in the broader lexicon of Hip-Hop and urban culture.

 

“In the past, the Hip-Hop Theater Festival has focused on introducing the Hip-Hop culture to other cities. This year, we are extremely excited to bring the festival back home,“ states Clyde Valentin, event producer and executive director of the Hip-Hop Theater Festival. “It has been such an amazing opportunity to work alongside recognizable organizations such as NYU’s Skirball Center and the Public Theater to educate the city about the culture and art so ingrained in its history. With this collaboration, we believe this going to be our best festival yet.”

 

For more information regarding the Hip-Hop Theater Festival, please visit – www.hhtf.org

 

Upcoming Dates, Venues and Slated Performers:

 

 

September 23 (6pm)	Style Masters Preview Exhibit	Skirball Center for Performing Arts 566 LaGuardia Place New York, NY	PART ONE CHAIN-3 T-KID 170 NOC 167
September 23 (8pm) September 25 (8pm) September 26 (8pm) September 27 (8pm)	the break/s	Skirball Center for Performing Arts	Marc Bamuthi Joseph & The Living Word Project
September 26 (7pm) September 27 (10am-6pm) September 28 (10am-6pm)	Preemtive Education: Language, Identy & Power	Silver Center 100 Washington Square East Room 703 New York, NY	Jamilla Lyiscott Janine Simon Zora Howard Marne Bruckner Kelly Tsai Carlos “REC” McBride
September 29 (7pm)	County of Kings: The Beautiful Struggle	New York Theater Workshop 83 East 4th St New York, NY	Lemon Anderson Directed by Elise Thoron
September 30 (7:30pm)	Cause They Said So!	Kimmel Center 60 Washington Square South 4th Floor New York, NY	Urban Word NYC viBe Theater Experience Impact Theater Lyrical Circle
October 1 (7pm) October 3 (9:30pm)	Boom Bap Meditations	New York Theater Workshop	Baba Israel Directed by Morganics
October 1 (8:30pm) October 2  (8:30pm) October 3 (8:30pm) October 4 (8:30pm)	Taking Over: The All City Tour	Hostos Community College 450 Grand Concourse Queens, NY	Danny Hoch Directed by Tony Taccone
October 1 (8pm)	Voices of a People’s History of the United States	Skirball Center for Performing Arts	Anthony Arnove Howard Zinn
October 3 (7pm) October 4 (9:30pm)	Insanity Isn’t The Sixth Vowel	New York Theater Workshop	Rudi Goblen Directed by Teo Castellanos Nicole Klaymoon Directed by Kamilah Forbes
October 4 (7pm)	Paradox of the Urban Cliche	New York Theater Workshop	Craig “muMs” Grant Directed by Sarah Sidman
October 6 (8:30pm) October 7 (8:30pm) October 9 (8:30pm) October 10 (8:30pm)	Taking Over: The All City Tour	LaGuardia Performing Arts Center 31-10 Thompson Ave Long Island City, NY	Danny Hoch Directed by Tony Taccone
October 11 (10am-5pm)	Black on Both Sides: Hip-Hop’s Afro-Latin@s Represent!	Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture 515 Malcolm X Blvd New York, NY	Afrolatin@ NYU’s Center for Multicultural Education and Programs The Hip Hop Associatino
October 11 (8:30pm)	Taking Over: The All City Tour	Grand Street Campus Auditorium 850 Grand St Brooklyn, NY	Danny Hoch Directed by Tony Taccone

 

 

About Hip-Hop Theater Festival:

Beginning in the summer of 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. Since its inception, The Hip-Hop Theater Festival has grown into one of the most influential outlets showcasing Hip-Hop performing arts in the country and has become an important contributor to the cultural life of participating Festival cities. This influence has been extended through live, professionally executed theater performances written by and about the Hip-Hop generation. Often using the elements of Hip-Hop culture (including MCing, DJing, Hip-Hop dance, graffiti and Spoken Word), Hip-Hop Theater tells urgent stories seldom represented on stage, and through language that embraces Hip-Hop’s multi-literate and poly-lingual vitality. Always imbued with an undercurrent of activism, Hip-Hop Theater ignites dialogue and social change through exciting, provocative and celebratory performance. For more information, go to www.hiphoptheaterfest.com.

 

About New York University’s Skirball Center:

The Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, New York University, located at 566 LaGuardia Place off of Washington Square South, provides a large-scale, professional performance space for university productions and events and live professional performances from around the world. The 860-seat theater opened in October 2003 and hosts the only major university-based professional multi-arts presenting program in Manhattan. The Skirball Center’s mission is to serve the NYU community while building young audiences for live performance by reaching out to them with a broad range of world-class, forward-thinking work at low ticket prices. For a complete listing of events happening at the Skirball Center, go to www.skirballcenter.nyu.edu.

 

About New York University’s Center for Multicultural Education & Programs (CMEP)

The Center’s mission is to provide educational programs and student services that support the goals, address the challenges, and recognize the contributions of students from culturally diverse backgrounds and to educate the greater campus community on the benefits of cultural diversity. Our team is committed to fostering a social, cultural, and intellectual campus environment that will empower all students to achieve their educational and individual goals. In collaboration with the University community, our vision for all students is that they will view and embrace diversity as an essential element of their personal growth, intellectual advancement, and community life at NYU.

 

About The Public Theater

The Public Theater was founded by Joseph Papp in 1954 as the Shakespeare Workshop and is now one of the nation’s preeminent cultural institutions, producing new plays, musicals, productions of Shakespeare, and other classics at its headquarters on Lafayette Street and at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park.  The Public’s mandate to create a theater for all New Yorkers continues to this day on stage and through its extensive outreach and education programs. Each year, over 250,000 people attend Public Theater-related productions and events at six downtown stages, including Joe’s Pub, and Shakespeare in the Park. The Public has won 40 Tony Awards, 145 Obies, 39 Drama Desk Awards, 24 Lucille Lortel Awards and 4 Pulitzer Prizes.

 

For additional information regarding Hip-Hop Theater Festival please contact Sarah Cirkiel (scirkiel@pitchcontrolpr.com) or Nicole Newsum (nnewsum@pitchcontrolpr.com) at Pitch Control PR, 212.475.4919. For more information regarding the Public Theater please contact Candi Adams (cadams@publictheater.org), 212.539.8680.