It's back! Don't miss:
Will Power in "FLOW"

"Will Power scored a big success in this summer's Hip-Hop Theater Festival with his solo show combining old-fashioned storytelling with the reigning beat of the urban street. Clearly, he? following in the boundary-breaking path of Danny Hoch, who just happened to develop and direct this no doubt flawlessly rhythmic piece." (Village Voice)

Friday, September 5, 2003
through Sunday, October 5, 2003
Tickets: $35.00
New York Theatre Workshop
79 East Fourth Street, NYC, 212-460-5475 http://www.nytw.org/noflash/index.html

The organizers of the NYC Hip-Hop Theater Festival (HHTF) bum-rush the stage once again this summer to present the best and brightest in Hip-Hop theater. Actors, playwrights, dancers and performers from New York, California, Canada and Europe will gather to present over 25 pieces in two legendary venues: PS 122 and The New York Theater Workshop. See Schedule below. In addition to our 10 day Festival, we are co-producing Will Power's exciting new play, "Flow", along with the New York Theater Workshop, immediately following the NYC HHTF.

From New York, we travel to Washington, DC in July for a week long Festival (7/15 - 7/19) and close our 2003 Tour in the San Francisco/Bay area in September with a preview Festival (9/12 - 9/14), which is a pre-cursor to a larger Bay HHTF in May 2004. Come see theater that celebrates the language and stories of the hip-hop generation and culture.

Performance Space 122
150 First Avenue (9th Street)
New York, NY 10009 New York

Theatre Workshop (NYTW)
83 East 4th Street (2nd Av)
New York, NY 10003

Tickets: Call the box office at 212.477.5288
or order online at www.theatermania.com

General Info & Group Tickets: 718.782.2621
Press Info: The Karpel Group 212.989.0300

WEEK ONE - MAIN STAGE

Playback Theater
Wednesday, June 4, 2003
New York Theater Workshop
7:00 pm
Tix $15
Day of Sale Ticket ONLY!

Formed in New York City in 1998 the actors and musicians of Playback Theater (NYC) use music, dance, Free Style Hip-Hop and improvisational theater to transform the stories of our audience into the art of theater. The Playback Theater Company performs in theaters, clubs, prisons, schools, hospitals, homeless shelters and for unions, companies and community groups.

Jack Ya Body Part 2:
The Olive Dance Company,
the Rubberbandance Group & Jen Sabel
Thursday, June 5, 2003
PS 122 Upstairs
9:00 pm
Tix $20

Hailing from Montreal, Canada, the Rubberbandance Group seamlessly integrates modern and Hip-Hop dance aesthetic forms to create unique and innovative works. They will be presenting: "Re-Inventing the Hip-Hop Routine: Take 3," a mosaic of ideas that reconstruct and inject new forms into Hip-Hop dance, and "Secret Service," where a specially trained division of the military police perform exercises to demonstrate the skills of this classified squad.

Jen Sabel's "Open Street Hydrant" features an all-female dance ensemble that takes an in-depth look at police brutality in New York City.

Olive takes traditional folk art forms and infuses them with multi-media production and the art of B-Boyin', producing a fantastic journey of dance theatre. Three men are on a quest led by one man's instinct. They experience bliss and uninhibited freedom on an enchanted island where anything is possible- so watch your back.

"Beatbox: A Rapperetta"
Friday, June 6, 2003
PS 122 Upstairs
9:00 pm
Tix $20

"Beatbox: A Rapperetta" by Tommy Shepherd (Soulati) and Dan Wolf is a critically acclaimed play written in rhyme and accompanied by beatbox (vocal drum beats) and DJ Raw B. The story focuses on the struggle of two brothers, Mickey Finch (Soulati) and Tet (Infinite Tunga Brown), to rise above the conditions that surround them.

Shorts: An Evening of Hip-Hop Generation Playwrights
Saturday, June 7, 2003
PS 122 Upstairs
9:00 pm
Tix $20

Back by popular demand, this special night of excerpts, one-acts and 10 minute plays features some of the best and brightest playwright talent of the Hip-Hop generation. In Claudia Alick's "Sick Rhymes," the intersection of violence and revelation reveals the power of words, memory and redemption. Seth Zvi Rosenfeld's "My Starship" tells the story of love in the 'hood and the anxiety of separation and co-dependence in the face of war. In Ben Snyder's "Tea," a young man distills the difference between chamomile and earl gray tea into a question of love vs. infatuation. Yuri Lane's "Soundtrack City" is a journey through NYC's 'hoods as told through a beat-box soundscape. Kerri Kochanski's "Slice" brilliantly loops the voices of young people into a chorus of vignettes and Vanessa Hidary's "Culture Bandit" tells the story of a New York Jewish girl's funny and sometimes explosive relationships with the diverse cultures that make up our great city.

WEEK ONE - THE SOLO PERFORMANCE SERIES

Bamuthi's "Word Becomes Flesh" & D'bi.Young's "blood-claat"
Wednesday, June 4 and Thursday, June 5, 2003
PS 122 Downstairs
7:30 pm
Tix $15

"Word Becomes Flesh" features the movement and words of Marc Bamuthi Joseph in a series of letters to an unborn son. Poetry, tap dance, live music and visual art document nine months of pregnancy from a young, single father's perspective.

D'bi.Young's "blood-claat" is a journey through one woman's many facets- feminism, Black activism, self-love/hate, blood and dub poetry- set against the backdrop of life in the working class neighborhood of Whitfield Town in Kingston, Jamaica. "blood-claat" is at once a liberation chant, ceremonial dance, celebration of hybridity and dub poem.

Hanifah Walidah's "Black Folks Guide to Black Folks" & Sabela in "Bulletproof Deli"
Friday, June 6 and Saturday June 7, 2003
PS 122 Downstairs
7:30 pm
Tix $15

Critically acclaimed with sold-out shows in Oakland, CA, "Straight Black Folks Guide to Gay Black Folks" showcases Hanifah Walidah's (formely Sha-Key) hilarious and nuanced mastery of a broad range of personalities in the Black community. "Black Folks Guide" examines homophobia in the Black community through the lens of sexuality, health, love, fear and faith.

Sabela's BULLETPROOF DELI is a long walk across the human landscape in a tiny cramped space. In BULLETPROOF, Sabela uses the mediums of video, movement, word and sound to construct a meeting place. You know the bulletproof deli, A make-shift eating establishment that doubles as a convenient store. When everyone else is closed, it's the only spot that's open.

WEEK ONE - THE RUFF CUT: A STAGED READING SERIES @ THE NEW YORK THEATER WORKSHOP

"Stakes is High" by Pattydukes
Thursday, June 5, 2003
New York Theater Workshop
7:00pm
Tix $10
Day of Sale Ticket ONLY!

"Stakes is High" is the story of a young woman sent to a juvenile detention center and encounters a variety of other young woman and their own stories. All they have is time and what fills it is an explosion of emotions. "Stakes is High" is a painful glimpse at little women lost, trying to find their way.

"Angela's Mix Tape" by Eisa Davis
Friday, June 6, 2003
New York Theater Workshop
7:00pm
Tix $10
Day of Sale Ticket ONLY!

Do the hula on a Russian cruise ship. Do yoga to Whodini in your Calvin Klein Jeans. Eisa Davis takes you through a musical montage of her childhood in Berkeley, California, where she grew up with her aunt, Angela Y. Davis. Even red-diaper babies have to go to the prom.

"MELIC COMPOSED"
by Lisa Biggs & Tanisha Christie
Saturday, June 7, 2003
New York Theater Workshop
7:00 pm
Tix $10
Day of Sale Ticket ONLY!

Lisa Biggs and Tanisha Christie present a fun-filled and thought-provoking improvisational performance cipher dedicated to love. Interlocking events from the Middle Passage to the modern day, this new work explores how men and women un-, dis- and re-connect, always composing our lyrical poetry of life.

WEEK TWO - MAIN STAGE

HHTF, The Apollo Theater & Okayplayer Present: The 1st Annual Hip-Hop Unity Concert
Monday, June 9, 2003
The Apollo Theater
8:00 pm
Tix $45

A new addition to the festival program, the concert will feature established, underground and international artists that represent the best our music has to offer. Performing live are The Roots, Tony Touch, Kanye West, J-Live, Soulive, Tomorrowz Weaponz, El Meswy and performing for the first time in New York City, two of Cuba's premiere rap groups, Doble Filo and Obsesion, plus many special guests. Don't miss this historical event at the world famous Apollo Theater in Harlem, NYC.

Shorts: An Evening of Hip-Hop Generation Playwrights
Tuesday, June 10, 2003
PS 122 Upstairs
9:00 pm
Tix $20

Back by popular demand, this special night of single act, 10 minute plays features some of the best and brightest playwright talent of the Hip-Hop generation. In Claudia Alick's "Sick Rhymes," the intersection of violence and revelation reveals the power of words, memory and redemption. Seth Zvi Rosenfeld's "My Starship" tells the story of love in the 'hood and the anxiety of separation and co-dependence in the face of war. In Ben Snyder's "Tea," a young man distills the difference between chamomile and earl gray tea into a question of love vs infatuation. Yuri Lane's "Soundtrack City" is a journey through NYC's 'hoods as told through a beat-box soundscape. Kerri Kochanski's "Slice" brilliantly loops the voices of young people into a chorus of vignettes and Vanessa Hidary's "Culture Bandit" tells the story of a New York Jewish girl's funny and sometimes explosive relationships with the diverse cultures that make up our great city.

Will Power in "Flow"
Thursday, Friday & Saturday,
June 12 - June 14
PS 122 Upstairs
9:00 pm
Special Ticket Price $20

Enjoy a special price for this first ever co-production of the New York Theater Workshop and NYC Hip-Hop Theater Festival. Through potent, thought-provoking rhymes and original Hip-Hop beats, Will Power's "Flow" explores life's daily struggles and lessons, as told by seven griot/MCs. A B-Boy fairy tale, "Flow" is developed and directed by Danny Hoch and features DJ Reborn on the turntables. Enjoy the special $20 dollar price through the run of "Flow" when you bring this brochure and/or a Will Power flyer to the PS 122 box office.

WEEK TWO - EMERGING PLAYWRIGHTS SERIES

"Raising Sugarcane"
Tuesday, June 10, 2003
and Wednesday, June 11, 2003
PS 122 Downstairs
Tuesday @ 7:30 pm
& Wednesday @ 10:00pm
Tix $15

Using poetry, film clips, music, dance and theater, "Raising Sugarcane" explores faith, our relationship to God and the profound experiences of love - romantic and sensual. This inter-disciplinary performance is a diary of an angel's exile into flesh that opens the heart and causes your head to nod.

"In the Last Car"
Wednesday, June 11
and Friday, June 13, 2003
PS 122 Downstairs
7:30 pm
Tix $15

In the Last Car is the story of Hip-Hop's coming enlightenment manifested in the subject of Agaceez. He is kidnapped by some dark individuals and manages to discover his purpose. A slight adaptation of The Prophet by Khalil Gibran, In the Last Car is written by MUMs of HBO's Oz and Def Poetry Jam and stars Lord Jamar of Brand Nubian. Not to be missed!

"Rough Draft of My Life"
Thursday, June 12
and Saturday June 14, 2003
PS 122 Downstairs
7:30 pm
Tix $15

Playwright tygerlily creates a powerful commentary on woman as daughter, sister, mother, lover, wife and companion. Biting, tender, harsh, gentle, profane and exalted, "Rough Draft" is a one-act play that chronicles the passions, disappointments, triumphs and struggles of a modern African American woman through four female characters. Using music, poetry and humor, "Rough Draft" builds a richly textured theatrical experience.

WEEK TWO - THE RUFF CUT: A STAGED READINGS SERIES @ THE NEW YORK THEATER WORKSHOP

"Giving Up the Gun" by David Rodriguez Wednesday, June 11, 2003
New York Theater Workshop
7:00pm
Tix $10
Day of Sale Tickets ONLY!

Wally, a troubled young man passes over into the spiritual plane, before his time, and meets his hero, rapper Tupac Shakur. Wally rushes headlong away from life in search of Heaven, while Tupac plays reluctant guide to Wally's flashbacks. Along the way, Wally bears witness to the revelations of Tupac's afterlife. A story of faith, and the hope to never find it again.

"Rewind (Soundtrack for Longing)"
by Greg Beuthin
Tuesday, June 12, 2003
New York Theater Workshop
7:00 pm
Tix $10
Day of Sale Tickets ONLY!

A mysterious bike messenger enters - and interferes with - the lives of three people in a love-hate triangle: Ed, an aspiring club DJ, his agent Monica, and her ex-boyfriend. Music, sexuality, color and culture are blurred against a backdrop of war as the mystical stranger forces the three to confront each other and themselves.

(SPREAD THE WORD!!) TICKETS ARE GOING FAST!!!

NYTimes Review
Hip-Hop and Musicals: Made for Each Other?
By JEREMY McCARTER
June 8, 2003

Will Power

EVEN years after it presented the world premiere of "Rent," New York Theater Workshop is continuing the search for a new kind of musical. This week, the workshop and the New York City Hip-Hop Theater Festival are co-producing "Flow," a new play by Will Power that sounds even more contemporary than Jonathan Larson's rock musical hit.

Tall and impossibly lanky, wearing cornrows and an infectious grin, Will Power radiates positive energy. He has written a one-man play about seven storytellers who "sing the songs and right the wrongs and carry on." A mix of social realism and fairy tale, the play portrays dozens of people in an imaginary urban neighborhood who are hounded Ñ comically, tragically, unpredictably Ñ by destructive social forces and their own vices.

"Flow" would seem to belong to the same panorama-of-urban-life genre as "Freaks" by John Leguizamo or "Jails, Hospitals and Hip-Hop" by Danny Hoch, who founded the festival and is directing "Flow." Unlike those shows, though, in which a solitary actor plays many roles, Will Power isn't only delivering his characters' speeches -- he is rapping.

Every line of the script is rhymed, giving it the lift of verse. Will Power may not sing, per se, but "Flow" still has the energy of a musical. With his frequent collaborator, Will Hammond, he has composed new melodies and bass-driven beats. In old-school hip-hop style, DJ Reborn (Robyn Rodgers) uses two turntables to play the music, as well as all of the show's sound cues, live onstage. Will Power dances through parts of his performance, twirling and sliding as he switches characters. Like few shows before it, "Flow" combines the complexity of serious drama with the visual and sonic arsenal of MTV.

Other hip-hop-based shows have had higher profiles than "Flow" -- like "Def Poetry Jam," which was performed on Broadway earlier this year. But that was an evening of poetry, a spoken-word event, not a play in the conventional sense. "Flow" will be presented at P.S. 122 in the East Village, where most of the hip-hop festival is performed, from Thursday through Saturday, the festival's last day. The show reopens there on June 17 for an additional run, ending July 20.

In its first four seasons, the festival's shows have fallen into two broad categories. Some have earned the label hip-hop theater by using elements of hip-hop, like rapping and DJ's. Outstanding examples include dance-theater pieces by choreographers like Rennie Harris, shows by troupes of rappers like Toni Blackman's Freestyle Union, and rhyming adaptations of classic texts like "The Seven," Will Power's update of Aeschylus' "Seven Against Thebes."

More often, the festival has presented conventionally written plays that deal with the concerns of urban youth, a racially diverse group that the festival organizers describe as "the hip-hop generation." Two such solo shows, Sarah Jones's "Surface Transit" (2000) and Mr. Hoch's "Jails, Hospitals and Hip-Hop" (2000 and 2001), have been among the biggest hits so far. (A schedule of this year's festival, which opened last Tuesday, is online at www.hiphoptheaterfest.com.)

Will Power, 32, has been creating hip-hop theater since before it had a name. Born William Wylie, he grew up in a predominantly black working-class area in San Francisco's Fillmore District, listening to the heavyweights of 1980's rap. By age 14, he was an M.C. himself, "battling crews from other neighborhoods." (These showdowns were verbal; as he tells this story over a bowl of soup at a vegetarian restaurant in Midtown, it's hard to imagine him in any other kind.) His grandparents, who lived in New York, were Broadway buffs. "I saw `The Wiz' on Broadway when I was 7, with the original cast Ñ it was hot," he said. "Meanwhile, I was rhyming on the corner." Like the rapper Tupac Shakur, he studied drama, spending two years in the acting program at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.

His dual passions for acting and rapping converge in the power they derive from the spoken word. "The density of the language, the highly rhetorical style, the lyricism Ñ it all kind of lends itself to being onstage," said Tony Taccone, the artistic director of the Berkeley Repertory Theater in California, which has presented plays by Mr. Hoch and Ms. Jones.

Unlike much of the best-selling hip-hop, Will Power's work does not traffic in violent posturing and misogyny. In "Flow," one of the storytellers belittles commercial rap's bling-bling sensibility: Ê

I had my headphones, Jay-Z was playing

I was walkin' down the street, listening to what he was saying

Something about, about gettin' paid

It didn't mean nothin' 'cause they just brought down the World Trade. Ê

Will Power gives "Flow" a steady beat, or pulse, by punctuating some of his verses with a short sound Ñ "zoo." When he describes an approaching storm, he says "be-de-KAT." The sounds, he said, came to him during a vision he had while walking home one day five years ago. In his mind's eye, he saw griots Ñ storytellers in West Africa Ñ on the run from unseen pursuers. When they changed directions, they said "zoo"; drums in the distance sounded like "be-de-KAT." He said he did not know the origin of the vision, only that "it was sent to me."

In the early 1990's, he and a childhood friend, Mohammed Bilal (best known from the San Francisco cast of MTV's "Real World"), founded Midnight Voices, a rap-theater-music collective. Despite a sturdy Bay Area following, the group didn't last. Sharpening his M.C. skills, he freestyled with Omar Sosa's jazz band. He also began performing his first solo play, "The Gathering," about the meeting places of black men.

Unknown to him, and to one another, young artists in other cities were conducting similar experiments, including Mr. Hoch, Ms. Jones and the British playwright, M.C. and dancer Jonzi D. When they started touring (the only way they could get their work produced), the contours of a movement began to take shape. In 2000, Mr. Hoch founded the festival, giving the new genre an unofficial headquarters and, for two weeks each June, a showcase.

The festival does not have a monopoly on hip-hop theater: Rennie Harris's celebrated dance drama "Rome and Jewels," based on Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet," developed independently, as did "Da Boyz," a hip-hop version of the Rodgers and Hart musical "The Boys From Syracuse," currently playing in London.

Though the work in New York has been uneven, the festival has drawn large audiences Ñ young, racially diverse and enthusiastic, even by downtown standards. Clyde Valentin, the managing director, said that 3,000 people attended last June.

This year, Mr. Hoch is concerned that New York Theater Workshop's connection to the festival will be overemphasized. "It says a play's not valid unless we're doing an Off Broadway run, or a regional run," he said. "If the Lincoln Center audience is going to see `Flow,' it doesn't all of a sudden mean we've arrived." Mr. Hoch insisted that hip-hop theater must be "by, about and for" the hip-hop generation.

So far, hip-hop theater's most distinctive, exciting quality is "how" Ñ the way in which its stories are told. In the brightest moments of "Flow," as in "The Seven," Will Power shows that hip-hop's fusion of verse and song could make it a potent update of the traditional "Oklahoma!"-style musical, one better suited to the stage than rock music. Like Rodgers and Hammerstein, who proved that even a carnival barker can sing a musical soliloquy, his work suggests that hip-hop's narrative tools will function well beyond one generation's concerns.

James C. Nicola, the artistic director of New York Theater Workshop, thinks hip-hop theater can tell any kind of story. He compares it to opera, with one critical exception. "Right now there are no conventions, the way opera is full of well-understood, time-honored conventions," he said. "It's evolving now."

"Flow" has not solved all the problems of combining hip-hop and theater, nor is it likely to turn New York into a city full of rapper-actor-dancers. But Will Power seems poised to inspire other artists to join him in exploring how hip-hop's fierce lyricism can enhance the language of the stage.

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only.

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The Hip Hop Theater Festival,
Apollo Theater Foundation, and OkayPlayer.com
PRESENT
THE HIP HOP UNITY CONCERT
@ The Apollo Theater
June 9, 2003, 8pm

Cuban MCs: OBSESION & DOBLE FILO
Meet
THE ROOTS, COMMON
and Special Guests: TONY TOUCH, SOULIVE w/J-LIVE, KANYE WEST, EL MESWY, TOMORROWZ WEAPONZ, & More...

The Apollo Theater,
253 West 125th Street.
New York
PH: 212-531-5000
Ticket Price: $45

Purchase: www.ticketmaster.com - key word: Hip Hop Unity Concert

Proceeds to benefit the Hip Hop Theater Festival and The International Hip Hop Exchange. In its continuing effort to promote global peace and unity through cultural exchange, The Hip Hop Theater Festival and The International Hip Hop Exchange will unite Cuba's leading Hip Hop groups, Doble Filo and Obsesion with America's leading politically and socially conscious Hip Hop groups, The Roots, Common, Kanye West, El Meswy and Tomorrowz Weaponz with other special guests. Cuban artists will perform at the world famous Apollo Theater as part of the 2nd International Hip Hop Exchange (IHX), following cultural exchange activities in Miami, San Fransisco/Bay Area, and Washington, D.C.

Producers: Rachel P. Goldstein - rachel@goldsteincom.com

Ari Goldstein - ari@goldsteincom.com

Clyde Valentin - clyde.valentin@verizon.net