Theater director Kenny Leon has previously conducted to numerous Broadway productions, but he’s currently in the works of showcasing his first musical. Drawing inspiration from the work of rapper Tupac Shakur, “Holler If Ya Hear Me” is a long-term project Leon has been wanting to get onto Broadway, and described as an “unconditional love story,” and an “anti-violence story” that isn’t a biography of Tupac’s life, but simply uses his music. Spotted in the Wall Street Journal, author Barbara Chai reports:
Leon said he tinkered with some of the music, but didn’t need to change much, and then set it to an American drama, adding that he was given the blessing of Tupac’s mother, Afeni Shakur, who is a producer on the show with Eric Gold. Todd Kreidler wrote the book and Wayne Cilento handled the show’s choreography.
“[Tupac] was just trying to talk about life and say something about the country and being an American and raising a family here,” Leon said.
The director searched for a group of multitalented actors — a cast is in place but he declined to name of its members at this time. While Tupac is often labeled a rapper, Leon said much of his work was R&B with melodies as opposed to straight rap.
“We had to have a group of actors that could sing, that could rap, that could dance — that could do hip-hop dance as well as straightforward Broadway musical dance. We had to have a good mix of 24 people who could do it all, but above all we needed actors who could tell the story,” he said.