Theater review | 'the break/s' brings hip-hop drama to ACT

Theater Review |

So what is "hip-hop culture" anyway? Or for that matter, "hip-hop theater"?

Don't expect a nice and tidy definition from Marc Bamuthi Joseph, the Bay Area dancer/poet/academic/hip-hopper, whose performance piece "the break/s: a mixtape for stage" is, in part, a search for a definition of those catchall terms.

Bamuthi is too sophisticated and analytical performer to apply simplistic parameters to the many aesthetic, sociological and psychological concerns he raises in his engrossing show. And he's well aware that much of ACT Theatre's largely white, over-40 audience don't know hip-hop from a hole in the wall.

Introducing it on opening night, Valerie Curtis-Newton (the director of ACT's Lorraine Hansberry Project, which is presenting "the break/s") called the piece "a bridge" to "a new audience."

Bamuthi may or may not draw the younger, more racially diverse crowd ACT hopes for, but you don't have to know who Jay-Z is to be fascinated by Joseph's theatrical memoir-slash-travelogue. The artist himself, a trained dancer and former Def Jam star, is a bridge between several cultural milieus and media.

As he dances, talks and reels off poetic raps in this "mixtape" (can we all agree hip-hop celebrates pastiche?), Joseph explores his Haitian immigrant background, his love for (and fears of committing to) a white woman ("the one you want to come home to, but not go out with"). And he addresses the contradictions of straddling urban street culture, political activism and bourgeois academia ("I want a Lexus, and justice").

Bamuthi's spurts of dance and spoken guilt, arrogance, indecision, and his pithy anecdotes of foreign travel, are invitingly candid, humorous and insightful.

He describes feeling much more out of place as a black American visiting a village in Senegal than did the white woman friend with him. Totally ignored in a trendy Tokyo nightclub, where he expected to be the center of attention, he shares his humbling epiphany: "I was just another guy who's maybe a little too old to be there."

He also admits, "The more accepted I am by others, the less I accept myself."

Between stories and movement passages (an artful melding of breakdance and Martha Graham-esque modern dance, choreographed by Stacey Printz), Joseph muses on the meaning of hip-hop as an aesthetic and social force, as do others in brief clips from person-in-the-street interviews.

As at many a hip-hop music concert, Joseph is accompanied by a percussionist (Tommy Shepherd, a drummer and vocalizer) and a "scratch" artist (DJ Excess, a maestro of vinyl and turntable).

The show's director, Michael John Garcés, puts all the pieces together skillfully and smoothly, including film and video images (shot by David Szlasa and Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi).

There's little in this show that's directly confrontational or patronizing to those not in the hip-hop loop. "the break/s" is not a lecture, manifesto, or accusation. And the only tedious patch is a bloated dream sequence about the rock god Prince.

There's a chronology of hip-hop in the program that stretches back to 1973 and encompasses virtually every major trend in black pop music, poetry and fashion from the 1980s to today. But "the break/s" is most worth seeing for the unsparing questions Bamuthi asks himself.

Those queries ultimately come down to a big one we all can relate to: What does it mean to be yourself, and do the right thing, in this vibrant, crazy world of ours?

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com