Carmen: A Hip Hopera
A long time ago, in far far away Seville lived a beautiful gypsy named Carmen. No, wait. Take it from the top. In 21st century Philadelphia, lived a beautiful and aspiring actress named Carmen Brown. That’s much better. Like in the opera version, strings play in the background, but they’re laced with a hip-hop beat. Instead of a tenor and soprano, there’s rap and in lieu of duels there are rap battles. But, like Tupac Shakur said in Changes, some things never change: Carmen (Beyoncé) charms gets half the town, including Sergeant Hill (Phifer), a cop who gets pulled into more trouble than he can handle. There are crooked cops (Mos Def), and a fortune teller (Wyclef Jean) who prophesies that things are heading way south. Yo, that’s just how it was, is and will be.
Robert Townsend
Robert Townsend is an American actor, director, screenwriter and TV producer born in 1957. He quickly dropped out of theater school to work as an actor and comic. Townsend's feature-length debut, Hollywood Shuffle, is the stereotype busting story of trials faced by Afro-Americans in show business. That satire garnered him the 1988 Independent Spirit Award. He later appeared in as an actor and comic in television, as well as directing films about musicians, documentaries and TV series.
Selected filmography
1987 Hollywood nie dla czarnych / Hollywood Shuffle
1991 The Best of Robert Townsend & His Partners in Crime (TV)
1993 Człowiek-meteor / The Meteor Man
2000 Holiday Heart (TV)
2001 Carmen: Hip Hopera / Carmen: A Hip Hopera
2009 Why We Laugh: Black Comedians on Black Comedy (doc.)