Social Protest Drama and the Politics of Hip Hop Performance

Beginning with the work of Bertolt Brecht and focusing on African American and Chicano dramatists in the 1960s and early 1970s, this course will explore how theatrical movements have used theater as a social weapon to articulate causes of social need. The first objective will be to establish exactly what constitutes theater for social protest. Students will read, discuss, and compare the history and evolution of such revolutionary groups as Luis Valdez’s El Teatro Campesino and Amiri Baraka’s Spirit House. We will compare their performance styles, their philosophies, and the relationship they developed between socio-political commitment and artistic efficacy. In addition, students will discuss how these performances were shaped by the context of the 1960s and 1970s, and whether they are particularly situated in their times or if they somehow transcend their historic context and speak to contemporary issues of race and identity.

We will see how Chicano and Black social protest theater attacked issues of oppression and employed cultural production as a means to economic and social empowerment. We will explore the significance of cultural expression with the socio-historic development of both groups. We will also look at contemporary uses of social protest performance in areas such as hip hop and spoken word. We will analyze the potential for hip hop performance to function as a mechanism of social protest.

Students complete two group projects, including the creation of a manifesto around social protest and a final social protest performance piece.