Bard meets Biggie in Berkeley

"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.""

"In the play, Ming-Trent portrays his introduction to Shakespeare. "I walked into the wrong classroom," he said during a recent interview, "and they were studying Shakespeare. They had me do a speech," which he nailed, and he began to understand why the work still resonates. 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."

A one-man show premieres at Berkeley Rep and merges Shakespearean verse with modern urban rhythms and hip-hop sensibilities. The performer grew up in a literary family but struggled to write until his father's death and a coffeehouse encounter delivered the message 'Get writing.' A mistaken classroom placement introduced him to Shakespeare and revealed resonant rhythms. Work with Shakespeare and Company led to story fragments that evolved beyond cabaret. A commission from the Folger Shakespeare Library supported development. The play integrates a Father character, family history and musical elements, and links Shakespeare's urban poetics with Biggie and Tupac.

Read at East Bay Express | Oakland, Berkeley & Alameda