Hip-Hop Shakespeare Live Music Videos Fun Take on Original Text
Othello as a credulous homeboy? Richard III as the meanest, gangsta-rapping mutha you ever saw? Why not? Shakespeare’s characters are as real as any inner-city denizen. Besides, the Bard likely would have laughed his ass off at the sardonic, high-energy hip-hop spin that Melanie Karin and David Benedict Brown give to everyone from Hamlet to Romeo and Juliet by setting lines and plots from the plays to music by Kanye West, Tupac and others.
An award-winner when it premiered at the Ottawa Fringe Festival last summer, Hip-Hop Shakespeare is funny, fast and clever.
It’s far from the first show to link the ever-adaptable Shakespeare and hip hop. In fact, no less a figure than British actor Sir Ian McKellen supported the launch of the London, England-based Hip-Hop Shakespeare Company a few years back. That company aims to point up the social commentary, violent elements and other commonalities between Shakespeare and hip-hop.
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