The 19th annual OMAI Line Breaks Hip Hop Theater Festival, an interdisciplinary Hip Hop theatre festival held every spring, will bring the top new aesthetics in contemporary hip hop and interdisciplinary performance art to the UW–Madison campus and the surrounding community, starting on March 20 and running through April 24.
Line Breaks consists of performances, lectures and discussions by First Wave artist-scholars and invited professional artists engaging with the Madison community, on and off campus. Inaugurated through OMAI’s sponsored Interdisciplinary Arts Residency with Marc Bamuthi Joseph in the spring of 2007, the Line Breaks project culminated in a final performance of student work called “Just Bust!.” Now running for 15 years, “Just Bust!” has evolved into an open mic.
The 2026 featured artists will include Matthew Braunginn, Erika Dickerson-Despenza, Madison McFerrin, Sophia Michelen, and Viviane Silvera. Bios of the artists can be found here.
The 2026 Line Breaks Festival theme, “Activation,” is an exploration of how artists, communities, and cultures come alive through stimulus, context, and intention. Drawing from the idea of gene activation, the festival frames artistic expression as something already encoded within us, waiting to be called forth.
Rooted in Hip Hop’s origins as an art form born from necessity and reflection, Line Breaks serves as a space to reconnect with the ethos, history, and embodied knowledge of the culture — activating legacy, dialogue, and collective imagination in the present moment.
For more information on the event, click here.
