Felonious Mixtape
An Evening of Hip Hop with Carlos Aguirre, Tommy Shepherd, and Dan Wolf, including music by Keith Pinto
IN-PERSON PERFORMANCES
Thurs-Sat, November 30-December 2
Thurs-Sat, December 7-9
All Performances Start at 8pm
General Admission tickets: $30/$27 for subscribers
Featuring Bay Area artists Carlos Aguirre (aka Infinite), Keith Pinto, Tommy Shepherd (aka Emcee Soulati), Dan Wolf, hip hop theater collective Felonious has been a force in the Bay Area theater and music scene for more than 25 years, often merging the two mediums to create intelligent, socially and politically-conscious, community-minded projects and productions that tell the stories of marginalized people and communities. From live hip hop musical performances to award-winning theater productions such as Angry Black White Boy, Stateless, and Beatbox: A Raparetta, this collective of rappers, actors, beat boxers, musicians, dancers, and writers are known to turn hip hop shows into ass-shaking musical theater.
Join Felonious for an evening of exhilarating hip hop theatre, some of which you may already know, and some that might be new to you. Aurora Theatre Company is thrilled to present this performance that will fuse the power and traditions of theater, music, dance, and education.
ARTISTS
CARLOS AGUIRRE
Carlos Aguirre (he/him) is an actor, musician, vocal percussionist, and educator who has been performing and educating in the Bay Area for years. Aguirre (aka Infinite) has shared the stage with the likes of The Roots, Eryka Badu, Black Eyed Peas, Mary J. Blige, Jam Master Jay, and L.L.Cool J, and has recently been guest starring with Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tony Award-winning show Freestyle Love Supreme. He is also currently producing his original rap and beatbox adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Tell Tale Heart, as well as recording and releasing new music. Aguirre shares his experience by teaching at various schools and at-risk environments throughout the Bay Area.
KEITH PINTO
Keith Pinto (he/him) is a multi-disciplinary artist from the Bay Area’s peninsula. He is a graduate of the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts and is on the faculty at San Jose State University and Ohlone College. As an actor, choreographer, director, and musician, he’s worked all over the Bay Area and in New York. He toured Europe and North America in Fame the Musical.
Pinto’s Bay Area acting credits include A.C.T., San Francisco Playhouse, TheatreWorks, San Jose Stage Company, Campo Santo, CenterRep, 42nd Street Moon, Shotgun Players, Hillbarn Theater, Jewish Theater SF, and The Retrodome. He received a Critics Circle award for his role as Bill in Me and My Girl at 42nd Street Moon, as well as Theatre Bay Area awards for his role as The Emcee in Cabaret at Hillbarn Theater.
As a choreographer his work has been featured in Mamma Mia! at San Jose Stage; Altar Boys at CenterRep (TBA Award); Colossal (Critics Circle Award) and Dogfight at San Francisco Playhouse; Angry Black White Boy and Block by Block with Campo Santo; Stateless: A Hip Hop Vaudeville Experience at Jewish Theater SF & Joe’s Pub (NYC); Beatbox: A Raparetta at Theater Artaud (now Z Space) and the Hip-Hop Theater Festival (NYC); Stand Up Tragedy at PCPA Theaterfest; and Jesus Christ Superstar with Urban Street Players.
Pinto is a member of the Bay Area Theatre Cypher, and is a graduate of the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts.
TOMMY SHEPHERD
Tommy Shepherd (he/him/they) is an internationally renowned actor, playwright, author, composer, educator, rapper, drummer, beatboxer, and music producer. Shepherd (aka Emcee Soulati) is co-ounder of the Grammy-winning family hip hop collective the Alphabet Rockers. He is a longtime member of the performance group Campo Santo, as well as Oakland-based hip hop acapella supergroup Antique Naked Soul.
Shepherd has composed, performed, and toured internationally with Marc Bamuthi Joseph, collaborating on Scourge; the break/s; Spoken World; red, black and GREEN: a blues; and /peh-LO-tah/. Shepherd won a 2018 Isadora Duncan Award for his composition work, and was given a key to the City Of Oakland in September 2023.
DAN WOLF
Dan Wolf (he/him) is an artist who works with rap, theater, personal narrative, and history to give voice to the broken world we live in. His performances combine conventional theater techniques with the music, language, and aesthetics of the hip-hop generation. His multi-sensory work draws its power from years of experience writing, teaching, and performing with Felonious, a critically acclaimed hip-hop music and theatre company, and Sound in the Silence, a remembrance project that creates live performances on-location at memorial sites connected to the Holocaust. His projects have traveled all around the world from theaters and concert halls to museums, schools, and memorial sites where he engages history as a prompt to make vital music and theater that can only live in this moment.
His play Stateless, a hip-hop and beatbox infused theatrical collaboration with Grammy award winner Tommy Shepherd, balances German and Jewish history with the problems of racism and the African American experience, and has been produced in San Francisco, New York City, and Hamburg, Germany. His play Angry Black White Boy, based on the novel by Adam Mansbach, premiered at Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco and was named Top Ten Best Theater Plays by the San Francisco Chronicle and San Francisco Examiner. His play Beatbox: A Raparetta (co-authored with Tommy Shepherd) has been produced in San Francisco, Oakland, Petaluma, Germany, and at the New York Hip Hop Theater Festival. Beatbox is published by TCG in the Hip Hop Theater anthology “Plays from the BoomBox Galaxy”.
Studio work with Felonious includes the brand new single “Fiend” and albums “Fight For Light”, “The List”, “Bust-a-Nursery Rhyme”, “Produce Section: Vol 1”, “Up To Something” and “Live City”.
Wolf is the co-founder of the Bay Area Theatre Cypher, a collective of multi-hyphenate hip hop artists that live at the intersection of theater and hip hop as a means to dismantle the traditional power structures found within the theater-making process by channeling the Hip Hop Cypher as a conduit for inclusive storytelling. He is a board member of the Playwrights Foundation, and a member of the Recording Academy and Actors’ Equity Association.
