"In a phone interview, Ming-Trent said that although he comes from a literary family-his father was a playwright, his grandmother a writer-he struggled to find his authentic voice. By 2018, when his father died, he still hadn't written anything. But when he visited his father's favorite coffeehouse, a woman came up to him and said, "Your dad gave me a message to give to you." The message was, basically, "Get writing.""
"Much later, he was working in the Massachusetts Berkshires with the theater group Shakespeare and Company, and started writing stories for what was going to be a cabaret. But the stories were "a wild, crazy mess," he said, and didn't fit the cabaret format. So he sent 16 pages to the Folger Shakespeare Library, and they agreed on the spot, he said, to commission its development into a play."
""Very early in the Folger workshop, [they reaffirmed] that I had something, and should continue forward with it," he said. The character of the Father evolved, and the story of his family's journey evolved and became integral to the narrative. The musical elements came to the fore. "Shakespeare was an urban poet. Biggie and Tupac are urban poets," Ming-Trent said. "They lived 400 years apart, but [we can find] similar rhythms in their work." He also noted that, "Tupac was a big fan of Shakespeare.""
A one-man show connects Shakespearean texts with contemporary urban music, positioning Shakespeare alongside Biggie and Tupac as urban poets with similar rhythms. The narrative follows an artist from a literary family who initially struggled to find an authentic voice and had produced no work by 2018, until a message urging 'Get writing' catalyzed creation. A fortuitous classroom encounter introduced Shakespeare and sparked engagement. Work with Shakespeare and Company produced cabaret stories that were reworked and commissioned by the Folger Shakespeare Library. Character development, family history, and musical elements grew central to the production.
Read at East Bay Express | Oakland, Berkeley & Alameda
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