"Othello: The Remix" Creators Freestyle with Steve Adubato"

"Othello: The Remix" creators, GQ and JQ (The Q Brothers), stop by to freestyle with Steve Adubato, and discuss their hip-hop version of the Bard's tragic tale of love, jealousy and revenge.

2/9/17 #2016

Excerpt:

"Meanwhile, though Othello never knew, he was gettin' schemed on by a member of his crew. Iago. Charmin' and his rhymin' was great, but behind all that grace, he was the slimiest snake! You want to know why I'm mad? You want to know why I'm mad? I'll tell you why I'm mad. Check it. Three of the hottest hip hop producers in town, told him my album should drop next, and that I should throw down. Now I know what I should be, I know what I'm worth. But Othello just ignores me and says, "Cassio's first!" Yo! Battle after battle after battle with this crew, I murdered mad MC's, but what's Othello do? He deals the freshman a fresh hand, and he makes him his best man, and lessens my chances by making me "Yes Man"... So hip hop and Shakespeare? There you go. And we've got GQ and JQ. They are the Q Brothers, the creators of Othello the Remix, Off-Broadway at the Westside Theatre, 407 West 43rd Street. Gentleman, how you doing? Great Steve. Good. How you doing? Good to be here. Coming to us from the North Side of Chicago... [laughter] ...here to New York City? Yes sir. This is your idea. Way back, you were 19 years of age, at what school? I was at the Experimental Theatre Wing at The School of the Arts, and it wasn't just my idea, it was me and a group of friends, and it was kind of like some kind of intervention from a greater source that was like, "This needs to be done." Because what we set out to do is just merge hip hop and theatre, and we ran out of time to make something original, and it turns out, as you know, Shakespeare is public domain. Yeah? [laughter] So why not? And then as soon we started translating, it made perfect sense. So well then your little brother, your actual little brother? Yes. Yes. J. You...? J, you told him? You say, "Hey, I've got something here"? Yeah. Yes. What's he say? So I was like in my first year of college, and he said, "Hey can you... you're always drawing in your notebook, can you like help us make a flyer with some of your graffiti?" And I was like, "What is the flyer for?" And he said, "I got this idea with me and my boys are doing this thing, it's a hip hop version of Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors." And I was like, "Okay." And like, "Do you need like, can I DJ it?" And he's like, "Well, maybe when you get here." You know. And so then the next year I transferred to New York, and we started going..."