Concrete Playground

Calling a show hip hop theatre is as provocative as it is accurately descriptive. Hip hop's genes carry a lot of thoughts on race, on class, on legal systems, greed, corruption, sex, violence — all of the pulsing darkness that forms the cross-rhythms of Western society. But there's another side to hip hop: poetry both hopeful and cynical, with a playfulness that is sharper than a knife when it comes to potentially changing someone's life.

Jonzi D, the UK's premier hip hop theatre director/writer/producer/performer, has arrived in Sydney in time to mix his British hip hop tastes with a localised, Australian talent pool. The result is East London West Sydney, a project that aims to deconstruct stereotypes about "the dodgy parts of town" as well as hip hop itself.

What you find in hip hop theatre, in East London West Sydney, is not low brow. It's intelligent, sexy and virtuosic: there are moments of poetic truth that ring harmoniously with Shakespeare and a rigorous engagement with the audience that echoes Brecht. And it's fun. No matter how serious a world we live in, it is through joy and laughter that we'll ultimately get by.

Image by Irven Lewis