1. Hip Hop Theatre: planning and draft due Nov. 20 for peer review; final due Nov. 2. We started already reading from Total Chaos and The Angry Black White Boy. The question: What is hip hop theatre and how do your examples support your definition? Total Chaos is a resource.
2. Hip Hop Music: Dec. 2 planning and draft due for peer review; final Dec. 4.
What is hip hop music? For this essay students can survey an artist whose work embodies hip hop culture. You could take an angle like: Women in Hip Hop. The musical survey needs to cover the range of the work. The artist has to be a key stakeholder in the genre.
3. Hip Lit: “The Coldest Winter Ever” –in class essay. We’ll write it Dec. 11 (in L-202E. Bring your outline and planning sheets)
Question: How is this book classic hip hop literature?
4. Hip Hop Visual Arts –already done
5. Hip Hop as a Global Movement – already done
Group Presentation Grade—already done
6. Hip Hop Spirituality—Soundz of Spirit, http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1808614830/info Nov. 18, 2008. Assignment posted. Question: What is Hip hop spirituality?
7. Hip Hop Poetry—films and other multi-media (written in class) First week in Dec. in class. Assignment posted. We will look at hip hop poets such as Saul Williams and groups like Youth Speaks. I am looking for a link to the show: The Infinite Mind about the meaning of poetry. I'll share with you in class.
8. Freewrites: The Message and Know What I Mean posts and other responses on-going
9. Hip Hop Dance—I forgot to include this so you can substitute dance for another genre.
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2 comments:
Kimberly Peterson
Professor Sabir
English 1B
22 November 2008
Hip Hop Theatre
Initial Planning Sheet
1. The subject of my paper is going to be about what hip hop theatre is to me.
2. I want to write about this paper because I would love to discuss the different meanings that it can have in looking at different types of theatre all around the world. What qualities does it have, and what does it not if any?
3. The audience that I will write for is my peers, and my professor.
4. The question that I want my research paper to answer is “What is hip hop theatre and how does my examples support my definition?”
5.The main writing strategy that I will use is a classification process, and compare and contrasting.
Kimberly Peterson
Professor Sabir
English 1B
28 November 2008
Hip Hop Theatre
Just like hip hop as a movement, hip hop theatre is its own culture too. Hip hop does not have any beginnings nor endings. I used to think I could define hip hop with my words, but I find myself struggling when I try. It is easier to just smell it, breath it, and live it. You have to live it and breath it in to learn how to understand it, and cease to exist among us. There is certain branches that underline what hip hop theatre is. Jeff Chang, a hip hop journalist and the author of Cant Stop Wont Stop, claims that, “When hip hop lost its way, [we] added a fifth element - ’knowledge’”(90), so instead of the 4 elements that make up what hip hop is, BBoying, DJing, graffiti, and rapping, there is also wisdom. Although the hip hop theatre experience can choose to or choose not to, employ 5 of the different elements of hip hop, the hip hop cultural can be found anywhere all around the world.
In Total Chaos, Jeff Chang explains that hip hop culture is “… the child of hip-hop and theatre. Perhaps there is another name that it has yet to find. For now, it carries the name of its parents and is more than the sum of its parts” (71). Hip hop theatre is classified as its own type of genre of theatre that uses different types of theatre that already exist. Some hip hop theatre enjoys just using one element, but some theatre employs all of the elements. The element that is included in all performances, it wisdom. You can see that wisdom is always used because in a lot of original, and remade performances, current events are discussed. Wisdom is doing the right thing for yourself, others, and your community. If you did not have any knowledge you would be not able to put on a performance. Hip hop performances can be anything, a Shakespearean hip hop story, hip hop theatre with ballet. There could even be hip hop dancing, a rap dialectic in a modern performance, there could be different types of art work, ect… This list goes on forever. As difficult to describe what the hip hop movement is, and especially the types of styles of theatre really goes, Chang in Total Chaos agrees too:
“There’s no way to essentialize [sic] all these artists’ work. Each re-creates the genre as s/he creates individual pieces. Some are more interesting in innovative theatrical form, utilizing one or more of the four elements for storytelling and form, and others are more interested in innovative narrative, making use of the sensibility, language, and stories of the hip-hop generation for content.” (72).
No matter where in the world you are, certain artists may want to focus on different elements, or use none of the elements at all.
The hip hop culture started in the mid 1970’s in America in the Bronx. From there on started a wave effect across the nation, and eventually over seas. Looking at hip hop music and the culture of it, has its roots from America, but is spread all over the world. Chang tells us that hip hop allows the articulate and the inarticulate to get together (Chang, 2006). It is like when you read a good book, and the movie comes out. A lot of people go see the movie just because they know its good, but you still have the people go see it that read the book first. In the same view, even people who don’t enjoy the theatre arts would enjoy a theatre show with hip hop style.
So in the end, hip hop really has no color. It doesn’t matter if it just comes to the music, culture or even theatre arts because it is too difficult to define what hip hop is. But we know its roots, and that’s the important piece, as long as it still lives up to its name, whatever that name may be.
can i live kim??? damn!!!
i mean all the assignments!!!
the whole class
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