Wilbury Group Presents RI Premiere Of HYPE MAN: A BREAK-BEAT PLAY

The Wilbury Theatre Group continues its 2018/19 season with Idris Goodwin's acclaimed new play Hype Man: a break-beat play, November 1-18, 2018.

Written by Idris Goodwin and directed for The Wilbury Group by Don Mays, Hype Man: a break-beat play focuses on a hip-hop frontman named Pinnacle, his beat maker, Peep, and his Hype Man, Verb as they make mixes, trying to make it to the top. That journey comes to a pause when an unarmed teenager gets shot by the local police. This causes tensions to stir and brings up questions of friendship, race and privilege. Hype Man: a break-beat play makes audiences think about where they came from and how upbringing is more definitive to one's life rather than the color of their skin or the ancestry of their DNA. After receiving it's world premiere production at Boston's Company One Theatre in January 2018, Hype Man was called "viscerally powerful, socially important, and artistically innovative theater" (Edge Boston), "riveting" (WBUR Boston), and "theater at its urgent, vital best" (DIG Boston).

"Idris Goodwin is a playwright well on his way to becoming a major force in American theater," said Wilbury Artistic Director Josh Short. "He brings a passion and a point of view to his plays that encourages audiences towards debate and engagement in a way that few playwrights ever learn how to do. When I saw Hype Man last year I immediately felt that this play would serve well to continue our work engaging audiences in discussion about what obligations we have as Citizens to react to injustice, and under the steady hand of Don Mays and the cast and creative team we've assembled I'm very much looking forward to sharing this important story with audiences."

Tickets are $15-$38. Call 401.400.7100 or www.thewilburygroup.org/hype-man

Frontman Pinnacle and his hype man Verb have been making Hip-Hop together since they were kids. Now that they've got top-notch beatmaker Peep One in the mix, the group is finally on the verge of making it big-until the police shooting of an unarmed black teenager shakes the trio to its core, and forces them to navigate issues of friendship, race, and privilege. The latest from celebrated break beat poet and playwright Idris Goodwin, and directed for The Wilbury Group by Don Mays with Wilbury artists Jeff Hodge and Phoenyx Williams in the titular role, Hype Man asks us: who has the responsibility to speak up in the face of social injustice?

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