Help produce the first-ever hip-hop theatre cycle in New York!

UPDATE! Baba Brinkman is a 2013 recipient of the National Center for Science Education's Friend of Darwin Award!

I'm Baba Brinkman, and I've written and performed three critically-acclaimed hip-hop plays off-Broadway over the past two years. All three shows were co-created (lyrics and music) with my good friend, DJ/Music Producer, and flatmate Jamie Simmonds, which makes us the rap version of Gilbert and Sullivan. This crowdfunding drive will launch a never-before-tried concept, presenting all three plays in rotating rep for a one-month initial run right in the heart of New York's Greenwich Village, with the possibility of extending through the Spring/Summer season.

Located amidst the NYU downtown campus, the Player’s Theater offers a rare opportunity to showcase these three plays, each of which transforms a traditionally academic subject into a thrilling hip-hop/comedy/theatre entertainment event. The 200-seat Player's Theater is available for us to rent beginning in March, running four shows per week for an initial four weeks, at $1,000 per show. To cover this $16,000 rental cost, plus the overhead for (your!) funder perks and Indiegogo's 4% fee, we need to raise $20,000.

If we exceed the target amount, the money will go towards adding additional performances and increasing our advertising budget to ensure success. If we fall short, funds will go towards producing a shorter run, however many performances we can afford to put on.

Exclusive Perks

As a reward, funders will be given VIP tickets to the shows, exclusive Rap Guide to Evolution t-shirts, CDs signed with original rhymes, and advance digital downloads of our forthcoming live album, Ingenious Nature. For more generous funders, I will write and record original raps on a theme of your choice and send you the Mp3, join you and your friends for drinks after a show, even do a live performance at your private event. If you have any questions about the perk parameters, you can email me for clarification.

I occupy an unusual niche in the hip-hop ecosystem, interpretting the work of scientists, literary scholars, the classics, and modern psychology, merging today’s most important ideas and stories with comedy, theatre, and rap lyricism to bring them to life on stage. I've been making a living at this for a decade, and yet people still often express surprise that there's a market for it. Well, there is, but sometimes it takes a leap of faith to get each project off the ground.

Help us continue to spread the power of evolutionary thinking, and the greatest stories ever told, to the widest possible audience!

Learn More About the Shows

THE RAP GUIDE TO EVOLUTION
“Astonishing and brilliant” NY Times

THE CANTERBURY TALES REMIXED
“Delightful” NY Times

INGENIOUS NATURE
“Brilliant and bizarre” Theater Mania

What You Can Do

First and formost, contribute whatever you can! Even the lowest funding amount gets you an amazing (and hilarious) live album, recorded off-Broadway in January 2013. Above that the perks just get more and more interesting.

Second, please help us to spread the word! Use the share tools and post the YouTube video to your Facebook and Twitter sites. The more this crowdfunding drive goes viral, the more chance we have of sharing these performances with the widest possible audience, including future tours of your area.

If you're curious about my previous track record with crowdfunding projects, check out The Rap Guide to Evolution Music Videos which were funded by the Wellcome Trust and supplemented by 300 crowdfunders via crowdfunder.co.uk.

Help us produce this unprecedented hip-hop theatre cycle in New York City!