Watch Table Read of Steve Bannon’s Bizarre Rap Musical About the LA Riots (Video)

The Shakespeare-inspired, hip-hop musical is titled “The Thing I Am”

Steve Bannon
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President Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon once co-wrote a Shakespeare-inspired, hip-hop musical set during the Los Angeles riots. NowThisNews, a Left-leaning digital news company, obtained a copy of the screenplay and conducted a table read.

Seriously.

Bannon and his writing partner Julia Jones teamed up for “The Thing I Am,” which was exposed by the New York Times last year. According to the Times, Bannon and Jones wrote it in the late 1990s, with William Shakespeare’s “Coriolanus” being the inspiration.

“His concept turns Shakespeare’s Romans and Volscians into Bloods and Crips, feuding on the South Central streets in the aftermath of the Rodney King verdict as images of violence and looting loop on TV screens,” Times columnist Daniel Pollack-Pelzner wrote. “The dialogue reads like a parody of gang slang.”

The 20-minute table read by NowThis staffers is complete with everything from sound effects to Elizabethan-inspired accents. The screenplay is apparently laced with curse words, including the n-word, and has a ton of racial stereotypes.

Bannon has significant ties to Hollywood and invested in several movies that cater to the political right. He was an early investor in “Seinfeld.” It’s safe to say, “The Thing I am,” isn’t going to succeed like “Seinfeld” did.

Actor Sean Penn recently blasted Bannon, who executive produced Penn’s film “The Indian Runner” back in 1991.

“Bannon was then, as he is now, simply another bitter Hollywood wannabe who went rogue by way of toxic narcissistic iconoclasm. But, deep in his heart, he’s just a conniving hateful bloated punk who despises mankind,” Penn told Death and Taxes.

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