(AllHipHop News) Incarceration is filled with idle time which people used to read books, write songs and generally get themselves together. Brother MC’s, Gregory and Jeffrey Qaiyum decided to fill the time of prisoners across the world with a modern Hip Hop remake of a 400 year old play.
The performance, “Othello: The Remix” is a retelling of Shakespeare’s classic poem of betrayal and regret “Othello”. The Qaiyum brothers’, renditions includes a new plot which centers around MC Othello releasing average rapper Cassio’s next album which infuriates upcoming vengeful rapper Iago.
The brothers have performed their renditions in England, South Korea and recently for 450 inmates at Chicago’s Cook County Jail.
Jeffery reasons with the Associated Press that while the original Othello may be centuries old, the underlying message of the epochal play can still resonate with the inmates:
(It) really comes down to choices and repercussions and often times, poor choices. I can’t imagine that some people in there are not going to feel that.
The brothers have remixed other Shakespeare plays for performances named “The Bomb-itty of Errors” and “Funk It Up About Nothin.'” They currently are working on offering a Hip Hop translation for every Shakespeare prose as well as for Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol”.
The two men are apart of the Chicago Shakespeare Theater.