Up Against the Wall: The Collected Works

(Paperback)

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The inaugural anthology of one of the first playwrights of the Hip-Hop Generation.

"The best of the shape-shifting solo performers who brought multiethnic New York to the stage in the nineties." -Time Out New York

"Mr. Hoch is a specialist . . . channeling the restless souls of the dispossessed and the marginalized since the early 1990s, becoming a boiling one-man melting pot." -The New York Times

Celebrated among peers like Eric Bogosian, John Leguizamo, and Anna Deavere Smith, Danny Hoch is one of the most powerful solo performers and talented monologists of his time. Capturing the voices of a multicultural city and a hip-hop politic with an ironic social lens and linguistic bravado, he has given expression to language and stories that were previously absent from the American canon. This unprecedented anthology contains three of the celebrated performer's most acclaimed solo worksTaking Over; Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop and Some Peoplethe long-awaited ensemble play Till the Break of Dawn and the one-act Up Against the Wall, a repeat favorite of universities and high schools.

Danny Hoch is an actor, playwright and director of both stage and film whose works have garnered awards such as a Guggenheim Fellowship, two Obies, two Sundance Fellowships and a Tennessee Williams Fellowship. In 2000 Mr. Hoch founded the Hip-Hop Theater Festival which has since presented over 100 Hip-Hop Generation plays from around the globe and now appears annually in several American cities.

Author Bio

Danny Hoch is an actor, playwright and director whose plays have garnered many awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship, 2 OBIEs, an NEA Solo Theatre Fellowship, 2 Sundance Fellowships, the CalArts/Alpert Award In Theatre and a Tennessee Williams Fellowship. His plays have toured to 50 U.S. cities and 15 countries. He is a Senior Fellow at the New Schools Vera List Center For Art & Politics and his writings on hip-hop, race and class have appeared in The Village Voice, New York Times, Harper's, The Nation, American Theatre, and various books: Out Of Character, Extreme Exposure, Creating Your Own Monologue and Total Chaos. His book Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop is in its second printing by Villard Books/Random House. His writing and acting credits for television and film include Bamboozled, Washington Heights, Prison Song, Some People, Subway Stories, Thin Red Line, Whiteboys, Blackhawk Down, American Splendor, War Of The Worlds, Lucky You, We Own The Night, HBO Def Poetry and the film version of Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop. In 2000 Mr. Hoch founded the Hip-Hop Theater Festival which has since presented over 100 Hip-Hop Generation plays from around the globe and now appears annually in several American cities. He directed Will Power's Flow (New York Theatre Workshop), Paul Flores Representa (Mission Cultural Center), and his own Till The Break Of Dawn (Abrons Arts Center). He was the 2007 Sundance Theatre Labs Playwright-In-Residence and was awarded a 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship for Drama. His latest play Taking Over, about gentrification in New York City premiered at The Public Theater in November 2008 after a free tour of Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx.