THE ROCK & THE RIPE Plays Links Hall in June

Links Hall and Emerging Artist, Mark Blane, will launch the opening of THE ROCK & THE RIPE, a play, book, and movement, created to give others insight into the relentless anti-gay bullying that children are enduring daily from students, teachers, and their communities.

Based on the true stories of a lost generation of gay suicides, this project honors and gives voice to the ones who are not here to tell us their accounts. Created by director/playwright/activist, Mark Blane, this play is a combination of several years of research, interviews, and case studies spanning across the United States. The material is most directly influenced by the recent suicides of openly gay teens Phillip Parker (death on 1/20/12) and Rafael Morelos (death on 1/29/12), as well as the personal stories and experiences of Mark Blane, a survivor of anti-gay bullying and harassment. 

Over 6,000 people from 80 countries have seen the video, “The Bullied & Bruised Gay Youth of America,” that has created buzz over night on the Internet and across international blogs. Lee Hirsch (Director of Bully), Dan Savage (It Gets Better Project), and Dustin Lance Black (Academy Award Winner for MILK) are all aware and supportive of this new grassroots endeavor dreamt up by a 23-year-old young man who is determined to help make the world a better place through the teaching of acceptance and non-violence starting right here in Chicago.

The play is set in a tiny waiting room outside of the principal's office where six young people await their punishment. Much like a cake that is half The Breakfast Club and the other half Waiting for Godot, THE ROCK & THE RIPE is frosted and layered with humor, tragedy, and mystery. This work is a 'new-age' The Laramie Project that takes real-life information and stories and mashes them all together to bake a mix of outcasts, misfits, and the misunderstood.

The book is being created/designed by Mark Blane, Jillian Barthold, and Kady Dennell. With a foreword by bullying expert and Chicago psychologist, Dr. Gary Howell,  the book will include photographs, interviews with the families of three bullied teens,  photographs, research, a study guide, and will include the voices of James Lecesne (Oscar Award Winning Filmmaker and Founder of The Trevor Project), Patrick Dati (Anti-Bullying Advocate/Author and Survivor of John Wayne Gacy Attack), and many others. The book will be available for purchase at each performance. 

For more information on The Rock & The Ripe, and the professional Chicago actors/activists involved, please call Mark Blane (219-781-5695) or visit http://www.therockandtheripe.com. Tickets are available for the premiere at Links Hall (June 1-4): http://therockandtheripelh.eventbrite.com/ The play has also been extended for two more weekends from June 7-17 at Teatro Luna. Those tickets will soon go on sale.

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