Fearless

Danny Hoch's straight talk

by Bill Rodriguez

This shouldn't be a big deal for an artist, but Danny Hoch is a lesson in integrity. He was abruptly fired from the rehearsal of a Seinfeld episode because he wouldn't play Ramone, a pool attendant, as a Latino stereotype. He refused be in a Quentin Tarantino movie because the screenplay contained racial epithets. Hoch even turned down big bucks to be in some silly soft drink commercials because they would trivialize his stage presence.

What is this guy, crazy? And where can the theater world get more of him?

Hoch is coming to Trinity Repertory Company April 17-22 with his latest one-man performance piece, Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop. Those who saw him in Some People at Trinity in 1995 were very impressed. The work featured 11 characters, from the Puerto Rican radio DJ with rat-a-tat rap to a liberal Jewish mother to a black kid who lets his racism flash out at a Chinese waiter. Also impressed were the New York critics and national grant-givers, just as they had been in 1991 with the then-20-year-old's first multi-ethnic work, Pot Melting.

Until five years ago, Hoch did conflict-resolution drama workshops in jails and high schools. He has acted in films, but only ones that made sense to him, such as Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line. Recently out on video is Whiteboyz, a film he co-wrote and starred in, playing a hapless Iowa guy who calls himself Flip-Dogg, whose only way to feel authentic is to spout black slang. Psychologically, that wasn't far from Hoch's own youth, growing up Jewish in Queens but making money break-dancing on Manhattan sidewalks and getting arrested for graffiti tagging.

Like his last one-man show, Jails was directed by Jo Bonney, wife of Eric Bogosian, the most well-known of chameleon-style one-man showmen. This performance has only eight characters, so Hoch can spend more time with each of them, including a Puerto Rican dancer on crutches and a former crack baby. By the way, Ramone will be there, too.

Hoch spoke by phone recently, between flights at Miami International Airport, heading home to New York for a day before resuming his busy schedule.

Q: I don't know if anybody's added up how much money you've lost by hewing to your ideals --

A: I don't want to know.

Q: There was that seven-figure Sprite commercial you turned down. Giving Seinfeld a hard time and losing that gig. Looking from the outside, of course, we can see this jut-jawed idealist pooh-poohing the idea of filthy lucre. But I'm wondering if at times it's been really hard for you to make those decisions.

A: Luckily, it hasn't been hard. Well, no, sometimes it's been hard. But I guess I rely on the fact that I [can] make my living doing what I do and sticking to my principles, which gives me a certain amount of freedom with it as well. I guess, yeah, I could make some more money, but what freedom will I lose for that? And if right now I can pay my rent and I have the ease to turn down an offer to write a ridiculous television pilot because I can pay my rent, I guess I can't complain.

Q: You created these new characters four years after writing Some People. I was wondering how they reflect your growth as a writer and a performer.

A: I think as a writer I've improved. Working with Jo Bonney, in particular, as a director. She forced me more and more to put my oral text into written text. The way I create my characters is orally, in front of audiences. So before I opened Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop in New York in 1998, we went to about 12 cities doing what we called structured improvisation.

So now I guess I have a more refined sense of creating this work, instead of just getting up and winging it -- which, of course, is always more fun. Winging it definitely creates more exciting material, but also anything can happen. You could be talking shit that nobody except you wants to hear for 10 minutes.

Q: You changed things on the basis of audience response, your more critical perception of what you were accomplishing, your greater understanding of the characters?

A: Issues have changed. Not just my perspective on them but the characters' perspective. Also, the characters are living and breathing, so over time they don't remain the same. But I wouldn't say it's audience response, really. I try to not cater to whoever the audience is.

Q: You've written TV pilots and film scripts about hip-hop culture and the people you grew up with, but most of these projects have been turned down as not being salable to the white culture. What you think it would take for that attitude to change? What are you fighting?

A: I don't know what we're fighting. Fear? You know, I see a lot of fear in white executives' faces, whether they be theater executives or TV or movie executives. Part of it is fear of losing their jobs or fear of losing advertising money. But also fear that they would not be at center stage anymore. That white, middle-class suburban stories will not be center stage. Therefore, there are these limits. You know, the only all-black shows on television are comedies. Thus saying black folks are only allowed to be funny. Latinos have their limits in television films. Asians are invisible -- we don't recognize them. Native Americans are not recognized. And occasionally a regional theater will present a play, in their season of all-white suburban shows, by a black playwright. But they don't reach out to a black audience, which is even more of a crime.

You know the show Bring In Da Noise, Bring In Da Funk? Well, it opened at the Public Theater, a show by black youth, about black youth, at the "public" theater. But only a certain public was able to see it when it ran for a year, because ticket prices were 40 bucks and it was marketed to the traditional theater audience. And when it moved to Broadway . . . audiences got whiter and whiter and more and more suburban. And it was around for two years, making millions of dollars, before somebody had the bright idea to get a grant from AT&T, $300,000 to subsidize tickets for black youths to see a show about black youths. So if that's where we are in what we're thinking, I don't know what it's going to take.