In Spite of Everything

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“In Spite of Everything” is the latest entry into the emerging genre of hip-hop theater, featuring the Bay Area’s most dynamic spoken word collective, “The Suicide Kings” under the direction of GOLDIE award winning Bay Area legend Marc Bamuthi Joseph. The play theatrically documents the Kings’ unlikely escape from the precipice of their lives, to the center of the public school system in Northern California. The piece has already been presented as a work in progress during the Hip Hop Theater Festival at La Pena Cultural Center and will be further presented in excerpt as part of the Hybrid Project at Intersection for the Arts. They have received significant funding from the Zellerbach Family Foundation, the City of Oakland and a Creation Fund Commission from the National Performance Network. The story begins the day after a school shooting in an un-named American town. As police and school administrators ask themselves the perennial question “What went wrong?”, they discover a note that implies that three poetry teachers in the school might have the answer.

RICOCHET IN REVERSE: The Columbine Killings – A short film based on the play