STAND-UP TRAGEDY Opens at Latino Cultural Center 12/7- 16

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' cultural 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 space to tell the story with audience seating onstage, Stand-Up Tragedy is an adrenaline-pumping and intense theatrical experience that is not to be missed.

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."

Stand-Up Tragedy is directed by Ruben Carrazana, starring Brian Witkowicz, Christopher Dontrell Piper, Jackie Kemp, Omar Padilla, Carson Wright, and an ensemble made up of local high school students Zachary Bosh, Angelica Carmona, Caleb Glaspie, Colby Glaspie, Aden Jemaneh, Iris Maya, Jessy McCarthy, Martin Francisco Mendoza, Cyena Rojas, and Hipolito Tapia. Stephanie Cleghorn Jasso is the assistant director, Juliana Dellasanta is the stage manager, Aaron Johansen is the lighting designer, and Jeff Colangelo is the fight choreographer.

Tickets: Available at the door or online at: https://stand-up-tragedy.ticketleap.com/stand-up-tragedy/. Adults: $10. Students: $5.

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