Chicago, IL (March 26, 2012) — Links Hall and Emerging Artist, Mark Blane, are proud to 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 greater society.

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 (1/20/12) and Rafael Morelos (1/29/12), as well as the personal stories and experiences of Mark Blane, a survivor of anti-gay bullying and harassment.

The project, which launched on March 9, 2012, is a viral and in-person campaign stretching all across Chicago until the opening night of the play on June 1, 2012. Posters, stickers, flyers will be distributed all around the city for people to join the movement and support these bullied kids who deserve equality as all children do (no matter gay or straight.)

Over 6,000 people from 71 countries have seen the video 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.

For more information on The Rock & The Ripe, the artists, and the professional Chicago actors/activists involved, please call Mark Blane (219-781-5695) or visit www.therockandtheripe.com”.

Tickets available at linkshall.org .