Ground Up & Rising, Inc.
Ground Up & Rising, Inc. is devoted to the ongoing growth and development of the South Florida community through the support of the dramatic Arts. Ground Up & Rising strives to make the Arts more accessible to the underserved, and focuses on creating opportunities for local playwrights, screenwriters, directors, and actors to practice and hone their crafts while producing groundbreaking, thought-provoking theatre and film that speaks to the younger generation.
WHO WE ARE
Diversity, both cultural and ideological, is one of the cornerstones of our company’s philosophy. Founded in late 2005, Ground Up & Rising is comprised of driven artists – ranging from Cuban-Americans to African-Americans, Jewish-Americans to Mexicans, Haitians to Argentines – who truly represent a cross-section of the South Florida community. Our company members are primarily first-generation Americans, descendants from people who came to this country looking for hope and freedom from repression. We aspire to fulfill the American Dream and carve out a fruitful existence in a nation that is newly ours. The diverse composition of our organization is a tribute to and a direct reflection of the cultural melting pot that is Miami.
WHO EXACTLY ARE THE "UNDERSERVED"
To many, the word “underserved” usually is used to describe people in low-income neighborhoods and rural areas, where social services and community programs are rare or non-existent. For Ground Up & Rising Inc., the term holds a much broader meaning. From the most affluent suburbs to the most neglected constituencies, a dearth of community programs that encourage interest and development of the Arts leads to a similar conclusion: future generations of potentially brilliant minds that grow with little or no exposure to the Arts and the chance to create within them.
GROUND UP EAST
As the founding chapter of our organization, Ground Up East is grounded in committing ourselves wholly to each community - one market at a time - all the while reaching for ambitions of global expansion. Ground Up East is entrenching itself in the two most famous melting pots on the eastern seaboard: Miami and New York.
GROUND UP WEST
As our latest upstart venture, Ground Up West follows our mission of creating community specific programming centered around the culturally relevant. We bring our hands-on approach to the Los Angeles area and provide the wide variety of people-first initiatives that Ground Up & Rising was built upon.
AWARDS
| 2009 |
Best Show You Didn’t See 2009
“For the second year in a row, the winning entry comes from Ground Up and Rising,
the shoestring troupe in Miami that mounted the stunning On an Average Day; also home to the best acting and direction
you didn't see awards, both going to Arturo Fernandez.”
- Bill Hirschman, Sun-Sentinel
(The best and worst on South Florida stages in '09)
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| 2009 |
Best of Miami - Best Actor 2009- Meshaun Labrone Arnold
“Meshaun Labrone Arnold both wrote and starred in The Hate U Gave, but the piece
had little of the self-indulgent flab most writer/actors can't bring themselves
to shear from their own work. His acting and writing were wise, while his subject
– and character – was just a savant: a man who saw the whole world clearly except for
his own place in it. Watching Arnold, as Tupac, rage against the chasms that divide us
(by gender, class, or anything else, but especially by race) – even as he bore helpless
witness to his own inability to do anything but widen them – was to see right into
the hidden heart of alienation. Arnold's tense, kinetic body and tortured
face were pictographs, notating its cost.”
- Brandon K. Thorp, Miami New Times
("Best of Miami 2009")
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| 2009 |
Best of Miami - Best Supporting Actress - Lela Elam
“This award could easily have gone to a dozen other actors from Judas Iscariot, whose characters were as big, bright, and sharply drawn as only a three-hour play with an almost perfect cast can allow. But Lela Elam brought it with an intensity rare even for her (which is saying something), as she played both an eternally grieving mother and Saint Monica. Her mother bit was moving, subtle, fragile, almost silent, but her Saint Monica was another thing entirely. Monica was the driving force of the play – an enactment of a long-overdue trial for Judas Iscariot, begun because Monica believes Iscariot got a bad rap – and she was entirely credible: a personality of such blazing force that you figure, yeah, she could totally reverse a divine judgment. In a single breath, she was bawdy in an entirely 21st-century, hip-hop kind of way; hilarious; trenchant; and scary. It was a hard part that Elam handled with relish. An actress this good probably has a difficult time finding roles worth sinking her teeth into. Thank heavens for Guirgis.
- Brandon K. Thorp, Miami New Times
("Best of Miami 2009"
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| 2008 |
Best of Theater 2008
“The Hate U Gave at Ground Up & Rising in Miami... Meshaun Labrone Arnold's performance as doomed rapper Tupac Shakur was mesmerizingly profane and threatening, seductive and sophisticated. Arnold's bare-bones script was immeasurably elevated by Arturo Fernandez's imaginative staging: a fantasia of obscenity-laced raps and rants examining the good intentions, tragic results and destructive hypocrisy living at the intersection of race, art and pop culture.”
- Bill Hirschman, Sun-Sentinel
(South Florida's 2008 theater season's most memorable moments) |
| 2008 |
Best of Classical Music 2008
“Project Copernicus joined the acting troupe Ground Up & Rising in an affecting commemoration of the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War.”
- Miami Herald staff report
(The year in review:Classical Music) |
| 2008 |
Best Of Miami 2008 – Best Supporting Actor - Sheaun McKinney
“Sheaun McKinney is one of the finest actors in South Florida, his take on Austin Judge a breathing testament to human dignity and sweetness. When he cries after an argument with his sister, he cries — tears, snot, the whole works.”
-Brandon K. Thorpe, Broward New Times
Review of “A House With No Walls”
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| 2007 |
Best of Theater 2007
“After watching his turn as a puling slave in the excruciating House with No Walls, we thought we had Sheaun McKinney figured. He was a cute, skinny kid, good for grabbing the heartstringsand little else. Our mistake. As a prison guard named Vasquez in Ground Up & Rising's Jesus Hopped the A-Train, he wasn't onstage a minute before the mean temperature in the auditorium dropped 10 degrees. He didn't want to rough up his charges, as the script might have suggested; he wanted to kill them. That desire, unspoken and undeniable, was almost certainly the actor'sown innovation. At least when he was onstage, McKinney really was full of hate, inspiring in viewers a creeping uneasiness and a sense they were sitting too close to an explosion waiting to happen.
- Brandon K. Thorp, Miami New Times (2007: The Moments in Review) |
| 2006 |
Best of Performing Arts 2006
“Small companies made a big artistic impact in 2006, demonstrating yet again that talent, taste and creativity can compensate for meager funding. Standout companies included … Miami's Ground Up & Rising ….”
- Christine Dolen, Miami Herald Theatre Critic – Pulitzer Prize Juror |
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