Walker Art Center and The Playwrights' Center Present One of the Hip-Hop Generation's Leading Voices, Actor/Playwright/Director Danny Hoch's Taking Over (work-in-progress)

“A gifted performer who uses his mastery of rap rhythms to invest his characters with remarkable energy and definition.” —New York Times

A special sneak-peek showcases the return of award-winning actor/playwright/director Danny Hoch, who continues his long association with the Walker Art Center (Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop; Hip-Hop Theater All Stars) with Taking Over, a series of enveloping monologues that looks at urban gentrification as a kind of neo-feudalism in the new millennium. Danny Hoch performs this work-in-progress on Thursday–Saturday, December 6–8, at 7pm at the Playwrights’ Center, 2301 East Franklin Avenue, in Minneapolis. Hoch’s long-awaited return to solo form features a crew of alter egos—invading artists, hipsters, developers, and community folk who have been “living there for a long time”—explored through the eyes and ears of one of the hip-hop generation’s leading voices. The performances and developmental residency are copresented by the Walker and the Playwrights’ Center.

Danny Hoch’s plays Pot Melting, Some People, and Jails, Hospitals, Hip-Hop have garnered many awards including two OBIES, an NEA Solo Theatre Fellowship, Sundance Writers Fellowship, CalArts/Alpert Award in Theater, and a Tennessee Williams Fellowship. His theater work has toured to 50 U.S. cities and 15 countries. He is a Senior Fellow at the New School’s 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.

Hoch’s writing and acting credits for television and film include Bamboozled, Washington Heights, Prison Song, Subway Stories, Thin Red Line, Whiteboys, Blackhawk Down, American Splendor, War Of The Worlds, Lucky You, and HBO Def Poetry. He stars alongside Joaquin Phoenix, Robert Duvall, Eva Mendes, and Mark Wahlberg in the upcoming We Own the Night and also HBO’s new series Wyclef Jean In America. Hoch’s own Some People (HBO), and the movie Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop were recently released on DVD.

Hoch founded the Hip-Hop Theater Festival in 2000, which has since presented over 75 hip-hop generation plays from all over the world and now appears annually in New York, Chicago, Washington, DC, and San Francisco/Oakland. He directed Will Power’s hit show Flow at New York Theatre Workshop, as well as the bilingual Representa at the San Francisco International Arts Festival. Hoch is the recipient of a 2006 Creative Capital Grant and the 2007 Sundance Theatre Lab’s Playwright-In-Residence. He sits on the board of Theatre Communications Group and the Hip-Hop Theater Festival.

Tickets to Danny Hoch’s Taking Over are $20 ($16 Walker and Playwrights’ Center members) and are available at walkerart.org/tickets or by calling 612.375.7600.