By Bill Hirschman
Ground Up & Rising, another scrappy cutting edge theater that performs intermittently and in different venues around Miami, is beginning another season of four minimalist productions including Edward Albee’s The Zoo Story, John Patrick Shanley’s Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, Danny Hoch’s Jails, Hospitals & Hip Hop and the recent off-Broadway hit Gruesome Playground Injuries by Rajiv Joseph.
Founder Arturo Rossi wrote that Ground Up “seeks to present powerful art in its purest, rawest form… (a) high quality, enthrallingly potent theater with a minimalist aesthetic, focusing only on telling a riveting story through a fascinating, memorable performance. It is engaging, thought-provoking theater that aims to attract a broader, younger audience base beyond the traditional theater patron.”
The first production is Ground Up’s presentation of Hoch’s Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop slated for Mondays and Tuesdays, May 21,22, 27 and 28 at the O Cinema Wynwood, 90 NW 29th St. in Miami. Curtiz Belz portrays an array of marginalized people battling to have their voices heard including a white teenager who dreams of being a black gangsta rapper, a wheelchair-bound kid whose mother smoked crack during pregnancy, a pale-skinned Bronx street vendor enraging a policeman who can’t figure out what race he is, and a young Puerto Rican on crutches who rhapsodizes about his dancing talent. To see a promotional video, click here. http://vimeo.com/64579735
Other shows at specific dates to be determined are Shanley’s Danny and The Deep Blue Sea in June at O Cinema Wynwood, Zoo Story in July at Miami Beach Botanical Garden; and an open air production in September in Miami Beach Botanical Garden of Gruesome Playground Injuries by Joseph who wrote the acclaimed Bengal Tiger in the Baghdad Zoo.
And, Rossi notes, it’s one of the most inexpensive tickets in town at $15 general admission and $10 for students. Tickets can be purchased with cash at the door on the evenings of the performances.
For more information, visit www.GroundUpandRising.org. For ticket sales, email gurachin@gmail.com.
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