Making Hip Hop Theatre: Beatbox and Elements

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Making Hip Hop Theatre is the essential, practical guide to making hip-hop theatre. It features detailed techniques and exercises that can guide creatives from workshops through to staging a performance. If you were inspired by Hamilton, Barber Shop Chronicles, Misty, Black Men Walking or Frankenstein: How to Make a Monster, this is the book for you. Covering vocal technique, use of equipment, mixing, looping, sampling, working with venues and dealing with creative challenges, this book is a bible for both new and experienced artists alike. Additionally, with links to online video material demonstrating and elaborating on the exercises included, it offers countless useful tools for teachers and facilitators of drama, music and other creative arts. Alongside this practical guidance is an overview of hip hop history, giving theoretical and historical context for the practice. From documentation of Conrad Murrays major productions, to commentary from leading practitioners including Lakeisha Lynch-Stevens, David Jubb, Emma Rice, Tobi Kyeremateng and Paula Varjack, readers are treated to a detailed insight into the background of hip hop theatre. Edited by scholar Katie Beswick and genre pioneer Conrad Murray, Making Hip Hop Theatre is a vital teaching tool and provides a much-needed account of a burgeoning aspect of contemporary theatre culture.

Author Bio

Katie Beswick is Senior Lecturer in Drama at the University of Exeter, UK. She has written widely on theatre, art and performance including the book Social Housing in Performance: The English Council Estate on and off Stage (Methuen Drama 2019); the student edition of Kae Tempests Wasted (Methuen Drama 2020) and numerous scholarly articles and book chapters on subjects including hip hop, street performance and performer training. She writes regularly for the music magazine Loud and Quiet and has interviewed and written features on hip hop artists and performers from countries including the UK, USA, Iceland and Norway. www.katiebeswick.com @DrKBeswick Conrad Murray is an artist, performer, beatboxer and rapper from Mitcham, South-West London. He is a qualified and experienced secondary school teacher, the artistic director of the BAC Beatbox Academy, co-artistic director of the hip hop theatre company Beats & Elements and associate artist at the Battersea Arts Centre and Gulbenkian. His shows include No Milk for the Foxes (Camden Peoples Theatre 2015); Frankenstein (BAC 2018); High Rise eState of Mind (BAC/CPT 2019). He was musical director and composer on Crongton Knights (Pilot Theatre 2020), and is director on Pied Piper: Silent City (BAC) and composer and director for The Last Man (BAC). He was awarded the Off Westend and Total Theatre Awards for Frankenstein. http://conradmurray.org @rodIUMrecords