Analysis of Jails, Hospitals and Hip-hop: and Some People by Danny Hoch

In the book and the performance showed by Danny Hoch, he used unique ways of solo performance to show communications between different hierarchy people in New York City. Hoch describes 10 different characters who have their own characteristics with different ethics and backgrounds in order to show the diversity. Through his performance, people in 1990s can learn more about the problem of tolerance of diversity and immigrants.

The changes of the Hoch's expression are made according to the needs of the plots. As he acted ten different characters with different stereotypes, thus Hoch performed in different emotions in order to stress the different characteristic. Characters in different plots often have different expressions, and sudden changes by the performers between sadness and joy, surprise and anger are important to make the audience more understandable. Hoch's expressions can change fast and consciously controlled to allow the audience to follow his emotional changes into the story. When he talked Kazmierczak, which is a funny story, his emotion was happy, while he talked about Cesar, which is a sad story, his emotion changed to be serious. Hoch acted as a father, who loves his son so much. He felt proud of his talented son — playing piano in front of others, which it's a heavy burden on his son. The father told his son every time he loves the son, but the first time the son replied I love you, he died accidentally. This is a tragical story compares to the others that broke out the laugh, thus when Hoch used sad tone and emotions to present this story, the audience would also feel sad about it. The sudden changes of emotions really can affect the audience's emotions as well.

In Bill, when Hoch talked about the argument between he and restaurants hostess about the food, he suddenly changed to be in angry emotions. Thus, the audience can be brought into the angry emotions at once. Hoch's performed in an exaggerated action and voice. As the audience can only watch from a certain angle under the stage, and the greater the distance, the less the action of the actor can be seen. Therefore, the performer must do in a special exaggeration motion and only when voice is clear, loud, and penetrating, the audience can understand and receive good performance.

Hoch used lots of exaggerated actions such as walking around, waving his arms and shouted out loud. Besides talking, Hoch used dancing and hip hoping to attract audience's attention. What's more, In the stage performances, external movements are referenced by inner emotions. For example, when he acted in the teenager called Floe, he used the actions as a teenager did, walking around freely and seemed to care to note around him. And Floe is the people who wanted to act like a brave teenager and try anything. But when he faced his girlfriend and had sex, he was not so tough at this time. He is nervous and vulnerable about it. This character represents a typical teenager — fearless but fragile at the same time. And Hoch presented this character in a bashful walking and movement, which showed the inner sight of this character well. And another detail is that Hoch acted with changing the clothes into a teenager who often wears: T-shirt with cap. By changing the clothes, audience can be better brought into his performances. As Hoch can really present different ten stories well on the stage, there is a huge difference in the writing and performance. Because Hoch used the method of communicating in order to have a connection with the audience, which we cannot experience from reading books by ourselves.

Hoch used different kinds of communication; indirect communication with the audience; communication with a non-existent object; and communication with himself. For example, Hoch asked an audience to step foot with him, which can describe the scene more vividly than read the book by myself. Not only the stories are attracting, the deep meanings behind the stories really can speak out many social or political problems and let audience rethink again and again after the show. The things he talked about the racist problem. In Bill, he went to the Chinese restaurant, but cannot understand what the Cheese was talking here. Then he thought they should learn English to make his life more convenient. But their country's language is not the best, we should respect every countries' mother languages. The people who were in an unfamiliar country have to figure out the living problem and serving people, it's difficult for them to learn other new languages in a short time. The United States is the country, which has most immigrants in the world today. The growing globalization has brought the society of the United States to be a more complex diversity, which reflects incompatibility that seems unsolvable. The conflict between diversity and integrated intensified under globalization. That is to say the ethnic conflicts are aggravated by the international immigrants.

American society is experiencing the contradictions and conflicts of various ethnic groups. And Danny Hoch played different roles in different ethnics and social backgrounds in order to show the diversity in New York City. And he showed some conflicts between the hierarchies. The white man had an ignorant attitudes towards other people. What’s more, the problem of immigration was brought out. As Danny Hoch mentioned some immigrants from developed countries move into the US, they were discriminated as they cannot speak English. Some attitudes towards them are rude as they think immigrants bring in the inconvenience. The wave of immigration in the context of globalization has naturally made it a result of the arrival of a large number of immigrants. On one hand, the new wave of immigration has indeed brought many social problems to the United States, but on the other hand, whether we ought to be tolerant to embrace these diversities need more debate in the future.