Reading week 2

Reading – Week 2

Bonney, J. (2000). Extreme Exposure: An Anthology of Solo Performance Texts from the Twentieth Century. New York: Theatre Communications Group.

Danny Hoch

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·         Hoch comes from the streets, the hard streets of New York and he is experienced in them.

·         ‘His mimicry doesn’t condescend’ (354).

·         Hoch comes from a very mixed neighbourhood where there was no ethnic majority, therefore his friends and neighbours were from all over the world and now living in New York City.

·         Hoch plays 11 people in Some People, each is desperate to tell their story. He plays a Polish immigrant plumber who is ashamed of his status but searches for better, Blanca, an urban girl misinformed by AIDs, a white teenage rap artist, a Puerto Rican made disabled by police, a black rapper on his 14^th album. Hoch is obviously diverse.

From Some People – Blanca

This monologue is about a young urban woman who is wise to the way of the world, but misinformed about AIDs. It is very matter-of-fact and conversational in tone. She thinks that a condom won’t be needed because they have already had sex, and if they’ve got anything then they’d have caught it from each other by now, and that AIDs can’t get her. She is suspicious that he thinks she is dirty. It is a political and social monologue, and talks about her gay flat mate. This shows her blindness in that he needs help. He has obviously been beaten and is struggling with his boyfriend and own self image and sexuality, but Blanca doesn’t see this. She is very street and urban and has knowledge of the world, but is blinded by her own sense of self-importance.

From Jails, Hospitals and Hip-Hop – Bronx

The monologue is by a man who feels he has been abused by the system and unfairly imprisoned because of his race. It shows a lot about contemporary issues around race, police corruption and the legal system but he expresses the issues that have been hidden or repressed. He believes he is not a criminal, but just poor, and the policeman arrested him because he is a servant and the man is not. He talks about the relevance of TV shows to real life. Race is a huge issue here. He talks to someone who he assumes is black, but has to eventually ask. This shows that race is a bigger issue than originally thought. His friend has to admit to being guilty so that he can get a shorter sentence, even if he is innocent. And if this kind of racism and police corruption is rife in America, one of the most advanced civilisations in the Western world, then it doesn’t hold much hope for other countries.

Both stories/monologues are political and from the point of view of the repressed, but not the conventional story. Instead we see the misinformed urban woman who believes she won’t be caught be AIDs and that she is not affected by racism, and we see the man who is imprisoned for doing the same as a young girl does on her front lawn, selling something, legally, to earn a living in order to survive.