Theatre, performance art, or spoken word--whatever you call it, the work of actor/writer Danny Hoch is a solo tour de force. In Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop and Some People, New York City's rich oral traditions come alive on the page, as Manhattan Boricua English, Brooklyn Polish, Bronx Dominican Spanish, Queens Trinidadian English, Jamaican patois, and Hip-Hop all get flipped and flexed center stage.
The range of contemporary experience on display in Hoch's monologues is astonishing: A white teenager dreams of being a black gangsta rapper. A wheelchair-bound kid explains how his mother smoked crack during pregnancy. A pale-skinned Bronx street vendor enrages a policeman who can't figure out what race he is. A young Puerto Rican man on crutches rhapsodizes about his dancing talent.
Now the thousands of fans who have enjoyed Mr. Hoch live or on HBO, as well as the many more who've only heard about him, can enjoy both Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop and his earlier, equally brilliant work, Some People, in a single volume that confirms his status as a unique and important artist.
The range of contemporary experience on display in Hoch's monologues is astonishing: A white teenager dreams of being a black gangsta rapper. A wheelchair-bound kid explains how his mother smoked crack during pregnancy. A pale-skinned Bronx street vendor enrages a policeman who can't figure out what race he is. A young Puerto Rican man on crutches rhapsodizes about his dancing talent.
Now the thousands of fans who have enjoyed Mr. Hoch live or on HBO, as well as the many more who've only heard about him, can enjoy both Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop and his earlier, equally brilliant work, Some People, in a single volume that confirms his status as a unique and important artist.
