Erasing the Distance to Continue 10th Season with COMING HOME

Erasing the Distance (ETD) is proud to announce the third production of our 2015 season: COMING HOME, directed by ETD Company Member Ron E. Rains.

Uniting new stories with staples from past productions, Coming Home features 5 African-American stories of homelessness, addiction, self-injury, depression and other mental health challenges--and the actions the storytellers take to find peace in their lives. Research by the National Alliance on Mental Illness reveals that mental health problems and their care are frequently stigmatized and misunderstood in the African American community. Through the production of Coming Home, Erasing the Distance will use true stories of real people to shed light on and provoke dialogue about mental health issues in the African American community. ETD sees this production as an ignition point to expand the discussion through touring into schools, churches and other community centers.

The stories featured in COMING HOME are:

• Sean (played by Greg Geffrard) comes from a single parent home without a lot of positive male influence in his life. Surrounded by gangs and violence and an unstable family life, he falls in with the wrong crowd. After the death of his mother, he becomes homeless and finds himself being pulled into the influence of drinking, drugs and street life. Despite those pulls, he ultimately finds an organization called A Safe Haven and chooses another path, working with youth through the YMCA to try to make a difference.

• Marlena (played by Tiffany Renee Johnson) loses both of her parents at a very young age, gets bounced around from foster home to foster home, and is involved in the DCFS system. To try and cope, she acts out with alcohol and drugs and finds herself using her sexuality to get by and ultimately find places to stay. Through the help of her aunt, she gets back on her feet, finds a way to go back to school and ultimately builds a new life for herself.

• Chloe (played by Angela Alise) faces bullying at school and punishment at home when it's discovered that she self-injures. Her parents dismiss her cutting as "a white thing" and see her behavior as a condemnation of their skills as parents. However, thanks to the intervention of her uncle and a caring therapist at her school, she begins to find healthier ways of coping with distress even in the face of lack of support from her family. She goes on to be a voice of hope for other young people looking to stand up for their own mental and emotional health.

• Michelle (played by TayLar) grows up with constant exposure to alcohol and becomes addicted at a young age. Her addiction grows to include other substances in her teen years and she is removed from high school. She has three children and faces increasing anxiety as she is unable to care for them due to the drugs and financial stressors, so she relinquishes care for them. Her family cuts her off and she enters a residential treatment program, where she begins looking inward to address the issues she's facing and make a change.

• Courtney (played by Ronnel Taylor) gets hooked on heroin in his 30's in a drive to be accepted by the community around him and to numb both the physical and emotional pain he is in. After 12 years of having his life on hold, he finally gets clean when he realizes the significant impact he is having on his kids and the opportunities he is wasting for a better life. Despite quitting the drug, he finds himself homeless in the wake of a relationship breakup and chooses the shelter system as a chance to start from scratch. Now firmly on his own two feet, he works to assist other homeless men as they journey toward stability.

COMING HOME

August 11, 12 & 13 at 7:30pm

South Side Community Art Center ~ 3831 S Michigan Ave ~ Chicago, IL

Adapted by: Sara Aye, Allie Cole, Michael Lederman, Brighid O'Shaughnessy*, Natasha Reynolds, and Elizabeth Smith

Directed by: Ron E. Rains*

Performed by: Angela Alise*, Greg Geffrard, Tiffany Renee Johnson, TayLar+, and Ronnel Taylor

Stage Manager: Kit Ryan

*ETD Company Member

+Actors Equity Association Member

TICKETS: $15 in advance, $20 at door, $10 for students/seniors/groups of 10+.

To purchase tickets, please visit http://cominghome2015.brownpapertickets.com/.