Many teachers of Shakespeare and his performative verse have used the idea that Shakespeare himself today would be an MC, or rapper. This is based on the commonalities between Hip Hop and Shakespeare’s theater; rhetorical devices and verse combined to create a performance of storytelling. Hip Hop adapters of Shakespeare have taken this idea further by creating plays such as “The Bomb-itty of Errors” and “Othello Remix” to incorporate the delivery of Hip Hop’s storytelling with the specific stories we know as Shakespeare’s plays. This paper investigates the blending of these two types of performative verse, attempts to discern whether this type of Shakespeare belongs to the genre of Shakespeare adaptations or to the genre of Hip Hop Theater, and from that considers a question of cultural collision: Who is appropriating whom?
About the presenterAngelina LaBarre
Angelina is an adjunct professor at Contra Costa College, and Artistic Director of Roving Shakespeare, a multi-city based Shakespeare company. She holds an MLitt and MFA in Shakespeare and Performance from Mary Baldwin College, and a BA in Theatre from Sacramento State University.