Thugun and Natasha

How to move beyond global warfare and gang and street violence is explored through the unlikely medium of RAP in THUGUN AND NATASHA, a drama with rap, for family audiences. The play is rooted in the real life Los Angeles killing of a young black girl by a Korean storekeeper who was a woman. In THUGUN AND NATASHA, the gun is personified and becomes THUGUN a master rapper and manipulator of peoples hearts and minds. RAP replaces the Greek Chorus, as Thugun the time-honored gun with all his attendant hubris, raps his way through life, exploring every angle of temptation for young men in an ethnically divided community as well as those living in fear while trying to keep their lives and their businesses intact. Sookee the storekeeper becomes a tragic perpetrator as well as deceived victim when she unwittingly kills the promising Natasha, an A student, a brilliant, precocious teenager while Thugun, the man-made oddity gloats in his achievement. Sookee and Thugun are finally put on trial, as is Article II, the second amendment of the U.S. Constitution, humanity itself and the will of human beings to transcend their differences and reach the ultimate intuition of reverence for life. THUGUN AND NATASHA is a play for all ages.