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 people’s 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.

Descended from Australian pioneers, Mary Mann has a Ph.D. in Communications and Drama from USC.  Her book, HUBRIS, The Construction of Tragedy will be re-printed by First Books in 2003.  She  edited two editions of The Los Angeles Theatre Book documenting Theatre in L.A.  from 1972 - 1984.  Her 7 hour play ANZAC,  a saga of war and peace in the 20^th century and  taken from real life,  premiered at the Globe Playhouse Los Angeles.  THUGUN AND NATASHA for family audiences addresses moving  beyond hubris and  violence.  Other plays include MARIA AND THE COMET, THE ROUND TABLE linking the world of King Arthur to the modern United Nations and THE RIGHT OF THE WOMB - post 911,  a woman’s  response to that event.