In the shadow of the Ferris wheel on Chicago’s Navy Pier, two brothers are proving that you can teach an old bard new tricks. Born and raised on the city’s North Side, the versatile Jeffery and Gregory Qaiyum—better known as the Q Brothers, JQ and GQ—have carved out a niche for themselves in the world of hip-hop. While they have appeared on both the big screen (GQ has appeared in several films, including “Drumline” and “What’s the Worst that Could Happen?”) and the small screen (the brothers had a sketch comedy show “Scratch and Burn” on MTV), the two are best known for adapting Shakespeare into rap. Following the success of their first play, The Bomb-Itty of Errors, the Q Brothers returned to their hometown to debut their newest work, Funk It Up About Nothin’, at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. For their latest project, the Brothers transformed another one of Shakespeare’s enduring comedies, Much Ado About Nothing, into a unique hip-hop thespian venture. As the writers, directors, and stars of the show, the Q Brothers have given new life to the trials and tribulations of the play’s two pairs of feisty lovers. With the opening weekend out of the way, JQ and GQ had time to discuss comedic tragedies, the Windy City, and a rapping cockroach.
Clubplanet: What gave you guys the idea to adapt Shakespeare plays into rap?
GQ: That started a long time ago with our first play, The Bomb-Itty of Errors. That started in 1998, the year that I graduated from the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. I was in the experimental theater wing, and I put together a group of guys to make a hip-hop theater project. We only had five weeks to do it, so instead of writing an original piece we decided to adapt something, and we were all really into Shakespeare at the time. There were four main actors that we wanted to use and we thought it’d be good if we played two sets of twins in a Comedy of Errors. And that’s when Bomb-Itty of Errors happened. Once we started doing it, it seemed like a perfect marriage.
CP: Had you done much Shakespeare yourself?
GQ: I actually grew up really hating Shakespeare. I had a serious aversion to reading it and identifying with it, but through my training at the experimental theater wing and certain teachers that got me to understand the musicality of the language, it started to make more sense to me. When I stopped trying so hard to understand it and just let myself feel it, then I really got into it. When we were growing up, we didn’t really do too much theater or acting. We saw plays like Les Miz and Miss Saigon. Our parents raised us to work hard at whatever we do, but they weren’t just downtown parents. We were born and raised in the city but where the cops and firemen live, not where all the kids that go private schools in the city live. They were humble people and both grew up not having the money to go to theater and Shakespeare was definitely out of our element. It was only later in life in college where it became something I realized was really important.
CP: You’ve done various other kinds of theater and TV and movies, what’s different with this?
GQ: What’s so exciting is that me and my brother J have done it together. It’s really come from both of our hearts. We grew up in Chicago. To be at the [Chicago] Shakespeare Theater is such a high level of professionalism and culture. For us to come home to deliver a world premiere of a new play, there’s no greater place to be and there’s no greater feeling to do it with our own flesh and blood. It isn’t about the money in theater, it’s about the passion.
CP: Why’d you guys choose Much Ado as your next project?
GQ: It wasn’t a big thought process. After Bomb-Itty we knew our next one was going to be Much Ado after we met with our older brother. TQ is the oldest and first link to Q Brothers Productions and he pushed us towards doing Much Ado a long time ago in 2001. We all said “Let’s do that together!” but it took us about five years to get started.
CP: You guys ever going to consider doing a tragedy?
GQ: Yes, absolutely. We’re going to do one more comedy and then we’re going to do Hamlet or Macbeth. I think Hamlet would be fucking ill. Everyone says, “How would you do a tragedy?” And I’ve been really visualizing it a lot lately, because of the scenes in Much Ado are pretty dark.
CP: How did the first weekend go?
GQ: Incredibly. We sold out all our previews.
CP: Who’s the target audience for this?
JQ: We want both. We want younger generations to appreciate Shakespeare but we want older generations to appreciate hip-hop. From the feedback I’m getting, people are coming in saying, “I haven’t seen Shakespeare this alive in so long.”
GQ: When you get someone on the board at CST saying, “Wow, I haven’t been so energized by a play I’ve seen in years, whether Shakespeare or not.” They’re getting it, they’re getting it. And it’s a little different. When The Bomb-Itty came out, we had a harder time getting anyone past a certain age to even put a foot in the theater. But hip-hop culture is so huge, it’s like what rock ‘n roll did. It takes over the world. It’s not just a form of music, it’s a culture. It’s an entire way of being, way of living. It takes over the way people dress, what they talk about, what they pump in the clubs. It eventually permeates every part of society, whether you’re old or not you have to deal with it. You either have to have an opinion about it, or accept that it will continue to grow.
CP: Ten years ago, would you ever have thought that rap would be in the Shakespeare Theater here?
JQ: It’s cool. It’s just nice that based on the success of The Bomb-Itty and hip-hop theater in general [has made it] much easier time this time. It used to be like, “Why hip-hop?” Well, we’re the hip-hop generation. “Why Shakespeare?” Because why not? Now it’s a little more like, “Oh, this is you’re next one!” and they’re not questioning it. This is a genre now.
GQ: And people would say, “Well, you’re all white, how did you do it?” and that’s a ridiculous, racist statement to me. But we don’t get that as much anymore because people are used to white rappers more. We’re half-Pakistani, so my defense is we can’t say we’re non-white and you can’t say we’re white.
CP: Would you guys consider branching into other literary works?
JQ: Yeah, I’ve been reading a lot of Pushkin. I’m always intrigued by Kafka and Metamorphosis. I want to see a rapping cockroach climbing on the wall doing weird, crazy shit. Make sure you got that right: weird, crazy shit.
Funk It Up About Nothin’ runs through August 3rd at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater on the Navy Pier. Tickets are available at www.chicagoshakes.com.