Beats and Elements

This collection of three hip hop plays by Conrad Murray and his Beats & Elements collaborators Paul Cree David Bonnick Junior and Lakeisha Lynch-Stevens is the first publication of the critically acclaimed theatre-maker's work. The three plays use hip hop to highlight the inequalities produced by the UK's class system and weave lyricism musicality and dialogue to offer authentic accounts of inner-city life written by working-class Londoners. <br/><br/>The plays are accompanied by two introductory essays: The first gives a specific social and historical context that helps readers make sense of the plays the second positions hip hop as a contemporary literary form and offers some ways to read hip hop texts as literature. The collection also includes a foreword by leading hip hop theatre practitioner Jonzi D interviews with the Beats & Elements company and a glossary of words for students and international readers.