The Oak Cliff Cultural Center and the Latino Cultural Center, in collaboration with local theater artists Stephanie Cleghorn Jasso and Ruben Carrazana, proudly present Stand-Up Tragedy, a play by Bill Cain. For the first time, two of Dallas' cultual centers are teaming up to produce a professional theatrical production from the ground up. With a cast of professional actors and local high school students, raps, basketball games, and only an empty stage to tell the story, Stand-Up Tragedy is an adrenaline-pumping and intense theatrical experience that is not to be missed.
Stand-Up Tragedy by Bill Cain
Directed by Ruben Carrazana
Assistant Director..... Stephanie Cleghorn Jasso
Stage Manager..... Juliana Dellasanta
Lighting Designer..... Aaron Johansen
Fight Choreographer..... Jeff Colangelo
CAST
Father Ed Larkin..... Brian Witkowicz
Burke Kendall..... Marcus Stimac
Mitchell James..... Jackie Kemp
Lee Cortez..... Omar Padilla
Tom Griffin..... Carson Wright
Student Ensemble..... Zachary Bosh, Angelica Carmona, Caleb Glaspie, Colby Glaspie, Aden Jemaneh, Iris Maya, Jessy McCarthy, Martin Francisco Mendoza, Cyena Rojas, Hipolito Tapia
Set in a Catholic school on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Stand-Up Tragedy is a play that tells the story of a group of young students and the teachers whose job it is to help them graduate, but they all face one seemingly insurmountable obstacle: the statistics that say that most of these kids are not going to make it.
In the words of playwright Bill Cain: “We live in a country—the most prosperous in the history of the world—where one of the leading causes of death of non-white young men is violence. In spite of the terrible truths that confront them, these students and teachers turn up daily and try to pass on a better world at 3:00 than they found at 8:00 that morning. They’re not cynics. They’re heroes—every one of them. I have tried to write the story of what I saw and heard while teaching in the same way that I saw it—packed and pulsing with life. Not well-made and neatly organized, but chaotic, muscular, frequently very funny, relentless, with moments of deep understanding emerging when the sheer volume of city-sound explodes into silence."