An 'Ad-rap-tation' of the Familiar
The Emergence of Hip-Hop Theater
By Joanne Hinkel
Theatregoers must have doubts when they enter the Royal George Cabaret Theatre to see The Bomb-itty of Errors, a play billed as a "hip-hop version of Willy Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors." Shakespeare enthusiasts must wonder if rappers will be able to maintain the intricate storyline and a language dignified enough to convey the sentiments of the 400 year-old writer. Hip-hop lovers must wonder how a bunch of white NYU theatre majors will be able to pull off rhymin' and keepin' rhthym on such an antiquated subject for 90 minutes without intermission.
But once the four rapper/actors hit the stage all doubts melt away as the audience is whisked away into the energy of Bomb-itty. From the side of the stage DJ J.A.Q. acts as the chorus providing the context for this modern tale. He scratches, spins beats and plays samples from Michael Jackson and Cypress Hill to supply rhythm for the actors as they take turns delivering the prologue. The storyline from The Comedy of Errors stays largely the same, but the circumstances have changed. The theater décor screams urban decay for a play that is now set in Syracuse, New York. The walls are covered in graffiti collages and the stage is bare except for two doors painted to look like corrugated steel. And this time the twins are born into a legacy of hip-hop - their father was a famous MC. Allow the words of Rodan, GQ, Red Dragon, and Chuck Booty to explain:
 | Illustration by Kevin Lonergan |
"Now MC E had been preparing financially
For one little kid so when they came out sequentially
1 to the 2 the 3 the 4
His heart skipped a beat and he almost hit the floor
MC E had never been good choosin' names
So without much thought he named two pairs the same
One he named Antipholus, the other Dromio
The next he named Antipholus and then another
Dromio"
Dressed in sneakers, baggy sweatshirts and warm-up suits, the actor/rappers prance across a tiny stage and dance to the edge, getting in audience faces to deliver these clever, sometimes hilarious rhyme schemes. Many times Gregory Quiayam goes off on tangents and amazes his partners. The lines are so tight that you really wouldn't detect this, except that the others on stage break from their dancing to smile brightly, root him on, and gasp at disbelief in moments of some genius improvisation.
In Bomb-itty there is no limit to modifications of the original play, and no limit to the comedy. Shakespeare's classic characters have been transformed into unpredictably unconventional characters. The court jester is now a Hassidic jeweler named MC Hendelburg; the oracle is a Rastafarian herbalist who peddles echinacea. The four actors play 16 roles and perform a total of 73 costume changes. At times one of the characters literally races off stage, as another stays on to finish a line, and then returns seconds later in a wig and dress thrown over his t-shirt as a female character. You see, each actor has at least one part to play in drag. As a result, sometimes the chaos gets confusing, as Jordan Allen-Duton plays both Antipholus of Ephesus as well as Antipholus' wife Adrianna. But the hilarious sight of Allen-Duton returning on stage with a dress thrown over his warm-up suit and a blonde curly wig hanging lopsided under his microphone head-set makes you forget that you were confused. And then his simultaneous rhyming at break-neck speed demands your attention beyond laughs.
Bomb-itty has a more substantial appeal than its laughs and awe for the performers' skills. It is a highly energetic youthful perspective from a place that often feels overly academic or as though it takes itself too seriously - the theatre. The fact that the production has been wildly successful, having been extended twice since the summer, now running through the end of October, proves that sometimes people want to go the theatre to just have some fun. Hollywood's attempts to tap into the teenage market with contemporary, edgy versions of Shakespeare tales have been steeped in fashion and style. From the rock video version of Romeo and Juliet (1996) to last year's Hamlet, starring Ethan Hawke as a depressed film student whose father is the CEO of a Manhattan-based corporation called Denmark (2001), these films hardly compare to the immediacy and intimacy provided by the experience of Bomb-itty. Rap may be just the way to bring Shakespeare to the streets, or the way to (pardon the pun) make it real.
The concept of hip-hop Shakespeare is hardly a novel one. Other rappers have been exploring Shakespeare from The Tragi-D of Hammy-T at Todo Con Nada to Rapping the Bard at the third annual New York International Fringe Festival to name a couple. You could almost say hip-hop Shakespeare is now its own genre. Also, rap has become important in teaching Shakespeare to students in recent years. Having discovered a tool for getting high schoolers into this aging texts, some teachers now assign their students to go home and rap a tragedy.
Hip-hop Shakespeare is exciting in that it fuses two seemingly opposite art forms, one that represents street culture and one that represents academic culture. The creators of Bomb-itty and other rappers who've contributed to the hip-hop Shakespeare phenomenon say that the two genres marry perfectly. Like the master bard, MCs create stories out of rhyme, rhythm, and metaphor.
Ironically, Bomb-itty of Errors was created in a think tank within NYU's Tisch School of the Arts when Jordan Allen-Dutton, Erik Weiner, Gregory Qaiyum, and Jason Catalano were trying to figure out plans for their senior project. Their main objective was to transform a piece of classic literature into rap. At first, Kafka was considered, but then Weiner's proposition to re-work The Comedy of Errors ultimately won out since it required four parts.
The fact that the Bomb-itty's creators were most concerned with bringing hip-hop to the stage signals a new era of experimentation for theater. Last June the 2nd NYC Hip-hop Theater Festival took place at a nonprofit performance space, where performers from New York, Los Angeles, D.C., and London performed plays and monologues.
An all-female rap musical called Cinderella: A Hip-Hop Tale of an Illegal Alien will be opening in Chicago on October 12 at the Bailiwick Arts Center on 100 E. Walton Street. The show is advertised as being "in direct contrast to the MTV-misogyny posing as hip-hop, and instead celebrates women in all their many talents." Theater allows rappers like Czarina Mirani and Erica Watson who wrote and and directed Cinderella the space and time to convey more sophisticated stories than a three-minute song or video could accomodate.
The emergence of hip-hop Shakespeare, and the entire genre of hip-hop theater for that matter, shows how rap can be relevant in more ways than anyone imagined twenty years ago. Perhaps it is their doubts about the fusion of two seemingly opposite worlds that lures people to come to Bomb-itty in droves. But once there the show helps to bring an older theater-going crowd to an understanding about the legitimacy of and creativity involved in rap, an artform which still gets dismissed by high critics. Shakespeare is to theater as rap is to the airwaves. Both are ubiquitous. Together they make an intriguing team - da bomb!
Bomb-itty of Errors plays at the Royal George Theatre Center Cabaret, 1641 N. Halsted, through October 31, Wednesdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 6 and 9 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Tickets are $35. For more information, call 312-988-9000.
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