"The Hate U Gave: The Tupac Shakur Story may be the most thought-provoking and lacerating evening in South Florida theater this season."

“A dazzlingly insightful script and mesmerizing performance...
make this a don't-miss production by Ground Up & Rising."

"Fernandez has amplified the script with imaginative
staging, dramatic lighting and a wide range of music
that comments on the proceedings. But his masterstroke
is to turn down the volume and speed to let the work
breathe in dramatic silences and quiet soliloquies.
By slowing the rendition of a Shakur song, he reveals
its words as passionate and insightful sociological
comment wrapped in a lyrical, if profane, street poetry."

"Fernandez has inserted balancing arias from a Greek chorus
who condemn Shakur for glamorizing the obscene damage
of the ethos he markets."

Bill Hirschman , Sun-Sentinel Theatre Critic

“It takes a brave company to produce a play
about Tupac Shakur."

"This remarkable show is the best possible
advertisement for both the form and its subject.
...elucidating manifold subtleties of human truth
with effortless speed and force, pummeling your
guts and breaking your heart before he goes
to work on your head.

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"An envelope-pushing, evening of music
and theatre.”

“Actors Rachel Chin, Arnaldo Carmouze and
José Antonio Paredes brought youthful vigor and feeling.”

“ ... funny moments from Carlos Alayeto as the
quick-change narrator and Luckner Bruno Jr. as
an over-the-top devil in many guises.”

Lawrence A. Johnson , Miami Herald Music Critic

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“Gritty Vietnam tale, dynamic cast, a sad soldier’s
hell in an earlier war is both an object lesson and a showcase
for a talented young troupe.”

“That Miami’s Ground Up & Rising troupe is tackling the first
play of Rabe’s Vietnam trilogy … is both timely and smart.”

“The company, which made its strongest mark to date with the
world premier of co-founder Arturo Fernandez’ September 10th,
is building a reputation for doing memorable productions of
gritty dramas with talented young actors.”

“Co-directed by Alayeto and Fernandez … the stage is awash
in testosterone, intensity, and aggression - ammunition in both
war and drama.”

Christine Dolen, Miami Herald Theatre Critic

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“I thought I was impervious. As a critic, I’m always focusing on the man behind the curtain; rarely taken in by the illusion. Nothing shocks me, right? Last Saturday night, Ground Up & Rising proved me wrong. The plucky young theatre troupe’s production of Israel Horovitz’s 1968 Obie winning play The Indian Wants the Bronx disturbed me more than any work I had seen in a long time.

Director Bechir Sylvain keeps the focus on the actors … elaborating on the sparse hints of troubled home life, the actors play their characters’ vulnerability beautifully, first glimpsed when Fernandez shows Alayeto a Christmas card he made, absurdly flattered by the uncomprehending man’s attention.

Each transgression builds on the last, from harmless taunts to bloodletting, as vulnerability is fended off through aggression. The pacing elicits fresh horror at every stage, as the realization sinks in that while these young men may have been harmed themselves they are anything but harmless. It’s a testament to Sylvain’s detailed direction and the emotional depth of the actors that in this production at least, the revelation is much more specific through the particular ways that damage is inflicted on one fragile human being can be deflected with even greater intensity onto another. The tragedy lay not in the “universal” proposition that there is a monster lurking in each of us, but that these two young men, rendered so completely by Sylvain, Carmouze, and Fernandez, should at such a young age with all of their joyful potential, know no other way to nurse their wounds than to wound another.”

Celeste Frasier Delgado, Publisher and Theatre Critic, Category305.com

“Bechir Sylvain directs the three men with a good sense of timing
and movement. You feel uneasy from the opening lines, and the
tension doesn’t let go. As the guys’ frustration with not being
understood escalates, so does the physical contact, and you
realize the situation is not going to have a happy ending.”

Marta Barber, Miami Herald Theatre Critic

“Tackling both a new space and
an acting challenge… each weekend
throughout the play’s run,
Carmouze and Fernandez will
switch roles, giving a different
flavor to the production.”

Christine Dolen, Miami Herald Theatre Critic

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“...The company had a hit this fall with the world premiere of cofounder Arturo Fernandez's September 10th, about young New Yorkers struggling with the life before and after 9/11. Fernandez directs the first-rate ensemble, which includes fellow company founders Bechir Sylvain and Sheaun McKinney, both of whom have worked for Adler at GableStage.”

Christine Dolen, Miami Herald

“Though Miami's new Carnival Center for the Performing Arts has been getting all the ink lately, it's worth remembering that theater doesn't have to be expensive or elaborate to matter. A theater community … grows when young artists with talent make opportunities for themselves. Ground Up & Rising is a company whose ambitions are as grand as its productions are simple. It wants to nurture new work. It wants to give meaty roles to South Florida actors. It wants to create theater that speaks to a younger audience. With its world premiere production of Arturo Fernandez's September 10th, it does all three … it feels very real. And, in the way that theater can reflect and help us process our own experience, it matters.”

Christine Dolen, Miami Herald

“From the theater development lab
Ground Up & Rising comes September 10th,
a new play about the impact of 9/11.
Although this stage version has decidedly
fewer special effects than the average
Oliver Stone movie, it still promises to be
a heart-wrencher.”

Daniel Renzi, Miami New Times

“September 10th is
a brilliant new play
featuring fantastic performances from
a talented, young cast. I was so enormously
impressed after seeing it that I immediately wanted to bring it to GableStage.”

Joseph Adler, Producing Artistic Director,
GableStage

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“Topdog is an easy pick for a winner.
Watch it. Watch it close.”

“Riveting performances …
the actors' angst and anger is as palpable
as the sweat that drips from their foreheads.”

Christine Dolen, Miami Herald

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“Propelled through the night like a junkie’s fever dream, the actors circle and crouch around each other like feral animals on burning sand.”

“The actors pour manic energy and smoldering frustration into this razor-edged street brawl of intellects.”

“This is pure theatre.”

Bill Hirschman, Sun-Sentinel

“Honorable Mention in the Sun-Sentinel’s Best Plays of 2005”

Jack Zink, Sun-Sentinel

“Miami’s sizzling Ground Up & Rising company is reminding theater fans how the
right play and visceral young actors can add up to a powerful experience.”

Christine Dolen, Miami Herald’s Critic’s Pick

“The outstanding performances by Fernandez and Sylvain give the audience an all too real depiction of life as a convicted felon. By humanizing these individuals by giving them pasts and relatable emotions, it once again deals with an uncomfortable topic; whether or not we should consider these men monsters or human beings.”

Chelsea Steele, The Panther Online Edition

Great Moment: Sheaun McKinney's instantly
evident bad-assness in Jesus Hopped
the A-Train:

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 heartstrings
and 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's
own 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

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