Thursday, November 20, 1997
Theater puts on ‘Homeboy’ story
THEATER: Danny Hoch acts as solo performer in his new one-man
show in Southern California engagement
By Kristi Nakamura
Daily Bruin Contributor
An episode of Seinfeld. "From Dusk Till Dawn" with Quentin
Tarantino. A one million dollar Sprite commercial. These are the
many offers from Hollywood that solo performer Danny Hoch has
turned down to maintain his artistic integrity.
Unlike others who compromise their beliefs for money and
stardom, Hoch remains true to himself, refusing to use his talents
to portray stereotypical ethnic characters.
Hoch performs his new piece "A Progress In Work: Evolution of a
Homeboy" in an exclusive Southern California engagement November 21
through 23. UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall will be one of the 12 stops Hoch
has scheduled before his show opens in New York in Spring 1998.
"Before the Greeks and the Romans, people were doing what I’m
doing, telling stories that entertain you, also make you cry,
provoke you, educate you, challenge you, make you get up and walk
out of the theater and it’s not something that’s really new," Hoch
says. "I’m not doing some avant-garde thing. If anything, what I’m
doing is just taking today’s issues from the people who are under
30 and putting it center stage, instead of having them be on the
periphery."
In "A Progress In Work: Evolution of a Homeboy," subtitled
"Jails, Hospitals and Hip Hop," Hoch says he is attempting to
reflect on and respond to both his community and his
generation.
"You never see characters from either (jails or hospitals)
center stage in any story and here they are in an evening of
theater. You never see any characters from hip hop in any
theatrical context, but that’s my whole upbringing, my generation
and my perspective," Hoch says. "So it’s almost like a hip hop
theater, as it were, but it actually is theater in the solo
sense."
Ethnic character impersonations have brought Hoch the
recognition he currently enjoys. Playing a dozen characters in one
evening, Hoch does not use his characterizations to poke fun at
minorities. Instead, he brings his normally marginalized and
under-represented characters to the forefront.
"Hoch glides dazzlingly through a repertory of characters,"
claims the New York Times. "He’s a master impersonator, the rhythms
and cadences of his various people caught perfectly."
Hoch inhabits his characters completely as he morphs between
nationalities, native languages, occupations, personalities and
even genders, just to name a few.
The characters Hoch brings to life in his theater performances
are so real that the Los Angeles Times hails him as a performer who
"inhabits his several characters so fully it’s difficult to tell
just who Hoch actually is."
However, if you ask Hoch who he really is, he says he constructs
himself and the characters he has developed as a product of when he
was born and where he grew up.
Born in 1970, Hoch says he feels the ’70s and ’80s were powerful
decades that are specific to many economic, political and social
events that shaped today’s 20-something and teen-age community. As
a third generation New Yorker, raised in multi-ethnic Queens, Hoch
says he grew up in a place where everyone was a minority because
there was no majority.
Life experiences provide the basis and inspiration for the many
shows Hoch has put together. "A Progress In Work: Evolution of a
Homeboy" was born from all the stimulation that jumbled in his head
while touring with his previous show "Some People," which was made
into an HBO 1995 Cable Ace Award winning special.
Hoch says that his ideas for characters and his penchant for
accents come from his own inner monologue. He says that since he
was a child, his inner monologue has been in a variety of accents
and languages that he heard and picked up around his neighborhood
in Queens, New York.
"When I was growing up and I used to see ‘Dynasty’ or ‘All My
Children,’ or even, like, Dan Rather on TV, I would think they were
being broadcast from another country," Hoch says. "I would think
they were being broadcast from Canada, Mexico, wherever, because in
my world nobody spoke like that."
Hoch’s passion for creating his generation’s theater stems from
the disenchantment Hoch felt towards acting in roles outside the
world he knew.
Because of his own passion for theater, Hoch does not want his
peers or today’s youth to grow up believing that "Theater is
boring. Theater is for 70-year-old ladies in the suburbs who have
subscription tickets to the Mark Taper (Forum)," as Hoch says.
As a solo performer, Hoch emphasizes that what he is doing is
theater. He says that often times people come expecting him to be a
stand-up comedian or a performance artist and are disturbed by what
they actually get: solo theater.
"If you think you’re just coming to laugh or just coming to
watch some abstract ranting, it’s neither of the two," Hoch says.
"It actually is a play, there is just one actor and I play all of
the characters and each character is its own separate scene. The
characters don’t necessarily connect directly. They just live in
the same world, that’s all."
THEATER: Danny Hoch will perform "A Progress In Work: Evolution
of a Homeboy" November 21-23 at 8pm in UCLA’s Shoenberg Hall.
Tickets are $27 and $10 with UCLA ID. For more information call
825-2101.