Cyrus Langhorne
[With the hip-hop world seeing the 2Pac-inspired Holler If Ya Hear Me play hit broadway this past summer, former HBO star Mums talks to SOHH about his friend Saul Williams and the production's short-lived run.]
I didn’t get a chance to check out the Broadway play because I was locked up doing my solo show. So I didn’t really get a chance to check it.
Broadway is an industry in itself. Sometimes they take chances but they really don’t take chances. It’s hard enough trying to get people in to a show they understand like Shakespeare In The Park.
Everybody has been trying to figure out where hip-hop stands in regards to live Broadway theater. Of course it fits. Hip-hop is such a dramatic musical thing and it fits in the Broadway model but how to do it? No one has figured that out yet.
This was just another example of that. And then the other thing is how do you get the audiences that love and respect 2Pac to come out and support it? The people who go see Lion King are people who come from Europe or the Midwest, they want to see an easy show. They don’t want to think too much.
And the people who want to see 2Pac, they live uptown. You gotta think about it. Are they coming to New York on vacation? That’s the realness. That’s the trick to the whole situation. As a producer, you gotta look at it from that standpoint.
I think you workshop that show. You workshop that show in Chicago, you work shop that show in areas where that audience is so when it comes time to put it on Broadway, they know about it already. But we all live and learn.
From what I heard, Saul was incredible and that’s my man.
