Hip-hop has never been just about rap music. In fact, it has moved far beyond the original "four elements" of MCing, DJing, b-boying/b-girling, and graffiti. Hip-hop has transformed theater, poetry, literature, journalism, performance art, dance, visual arts, photography, graphic design, film, video…the list goes on. Name your genre, and I can probably tell you how hip-hop has changed it. Hip-hop is one of the big ideas of this generation, a grand expression of our collective creative powers.
-Jeff Chang, author of "Total Chaos"
"At first blush a Shakespeare festival doing hip-hop may sound absurd... but I think there's a real connection between theatrical movements that are about celebrating language and combining slang with elevated poetic forms. Shakespeare grabbed vernacular from the street."
-Bill Rauch, OSF artistic director
The OSF hip-hop boot camp in October 2007 was a four-day intensive, where expert practitioners met to explore the intersection of nexthetics (the term for hip-hop and spoken word aesthetics) and classical theatre. During our time together we worked with Shakespearean sonnets and text from Love’s Labor’s Lost, workshopped excerpts of original adaptations and plays from guest artists and other nexthetic playwrights, and held round table discussions on hip-hop education and the classics, developmental models, and creating a common language.
The goals and values of this exploration are:
- to honor OSF as a language-based theatre
- to create relationships between nexthetics cultural producers (writers, performers, choreographers, directors, producers, etc.) OSF’s cultural producers (performers, education staff, artistic staff, and board members) and the local community
- to incubate material for future production
- to develop language and concepts specifically around the conjunction of classical work and nexthetics work, while sharing knowledge and skills in a reciprocal exchange between all participants
It is, to our knowledge, the first event of its kind.
Among the guest artists participating in the First Hip-Hop Boot Camp were Morganics, Al Letson, Baba Israel, Nicole Klaymoon, Steven Sapp, Rickerby Hinds, Kamilah Forbes, and Joe Hernandez-Kolski.
The OSF artists who participated included Claudia Alick, Scott Kaiser, John Tufts, Terri McMahon, Tyrone Wilson, Sarah Rutan, Danforth Comins, René Millán and Kevin Kenerly.
View a slide show of the participants' discussions, workshops and presentations for both the company and public. The music was created by the participants.
Listen to an interview with associate producer Claudia Alick about nexthetics and hip-hop theatre. Find out more about Claudia Alick.
Watch this page for information about the next gathering of the Hip-Hop Boot Camp.