Our Work in Their Words ...

ARTURO FERNANDEZ

Sun-Sentinel – Best Actor You Didn’t See 2009

Sun-Sentinel – Best Director You Didn’t See 2009

…Every once in a while the work of an actor, actress or set designer you've never heard of is so stunning that you ask, "Who is that?... Arturo Fernandez is South Florida's best-kept secret. He's the producing artistic director of the shoestring Ground Up & Rising troupe, which moves more often than a Bedouin. Fernandez's tour de force performance and driving direction of On an Average Day last month was hypnotic. Florida is famous for its pushover audiences giving standing ovations to nearly everything, but this production earned it. Ground Up is the same group that produced the criminally overlooked The Hate U Gave: The Tupac Shakur Story last year."

Bill Hirschman , Sun-Sentinel - On An Average Day.

“… A quadruple threat: a company founder, playwright, director and producer. (He) can act too, though Fernandez focused on the other four tasks in September 10th. Fernandez takes a clearly engaged audience on a journey from innocent dreams to altered reality … Drawing uniformly strong work from his talented cast, Fernandez explores nothing less than the post-traumatic stress of a generation.”

Christine Dolen, Miami Herald Review of “September 10th”

“... First, the acting by the two stars - Arturo Fernandez and Arnaldo Carmouze -is A class.. absorbing and classy... a vigorous character study. The acting makes this visit worthwhile - seeing two extremely capable actors put their spin on unlikely characters."

Ron Levitt, Florida Media News - On An Average Day

“…Arturo Fernandez, a charismatic and energetic young actor…”

Marta Barber, Miami Herald Review of “The Indian Wants the Bronx”

“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, The best and worst on South Florida stages in '09 - On An Average Day

“Fernandez is all jittery extremes, physically and vocally, creating an emotionally and intellectually deficient young man, the bastard son of a mentally ill mother.”

Christine Dolen, Miami Herald Review of “The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel”

“...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.”

“the actors play their characters’ vulnerability beautifully… the genial relationship between the two young men, expressed in a West-Side-Story-style “we’re depraved on a count a we’re deprived” juvenile delinquent patter gives the sense that these wise guys are essentially harmless – reinforced by a passing resemblance in delivery between Fernandez and Vince Vaughn.”

Celeste Frasier Delgado, Category305.com Review of “The Indian Wants the Bronx”

“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.”

Bill Hirschman, Sun-Sentinel Review of “The Hate U Gave: The Tupac Shakur Story ”

“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's South Florida theater's memorable moments 2008:
“The Hate U Gave: The Tupac Shakur Story ””

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KAMESHIA DUNCAN

Carbonell Nominee – Best Actress 2008

Carbonell Nominee – Best Actress 2007

Carbonell Awards – Inaugural 2007
Fred Diekmann Emerging Artist Award

Miami Sun Post – Best Actress 2006

“Kameshia Duncan's acting as Ona is achingly beautiful.

The two performances that cut to the emotional heart of the play, however, come from Miami actors Kameshia Duncan as Oney Judge, a slave who served Martha Washington, and Sheaun McKinney as Oney's brother Austin.

The other actors give A House With No Walls its fireworks. Duncan and McKinney
supply, unforgettably, its tears.”

Christine Dolen, Miami Herald, Review of “A House With No Walls”

“Duncan’s voice and eyes not only portray her character’s anguish, but make the audience feel it deeply, so much so that when she comes out for her curtain call, still trembling from her character’s emotional roller coaster, you just want to hug her and tell her everything will be OK. She’s the real thing, through and through.”

Miami Sun Post, Best of 2006

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BECHIR SYLVAIN

Christine Dolen, Miami Herald, Review of “Jesus Hopped The ‘A’ Train”

“Stoop-shouldered as if carrying a burden, yet moving with a liquid grace, Sylvain convincingly gathers into one soul the capacity to murder without remorse and the ability to appreciate the flight of a bird in the sunlight.”

Bill Hirschman, Sun-Sentinel Review of “Jesus Hopped The ‘A’ Train”

“Director Bechir Sylvain keeps the focus on the actors … elaborating on the sparse hints of troubled home life”

Celeste Frasier Delgado, Category305.com , Review of “The Indian wants the Bronx ”

“Bechir Sylvain directs the three men with a good sense of timingand movement. You feel uneasy from the opening lines, and the tension doesn’t let go."

Marta Barber, Miami Herald, Review of “The Indian wants the Bronx ”

“Sylvain did a phenomenal job rappelling Paul's intricate layers, jumping deftly from earnest and solicitous to cagey and desperate. He drew a sympathetic, realistic character who betrayed the others' phony facades."

Kathy L. Greenberg, Tampa Tribune, Review of “Six Degrees of Separation ”

“His performance is spent undergoing an interesting transformation: In the beginning, he's just a brainy, boisterous, happy-go-lucky boyfriend — completely agog, apparently, over his hip, literary love interest — and by the end, he's become believably somber, the great responsibility of his long friendship with Manzelli's David showing in his face and in his weighted, heavy gestures. Watching him move is to watch the long arc of real brotherly love traced in a human tableau, and it's the one moment of redeeming sweetness in a play otherwise made worthwhile by its own giddy viciousness.”

Brandon K. Thorpe, Broward New Times Review of “Manuscript”

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SHEAUN MCKINNEY

Miami New Times'
Best of Miami 2008 – Best Supporting Actor

Carbonell Nominee – Best Actor 2002

“A young actor of considerable promise …
McKinney delivers a tour-de-force performance.”

Miami Herald Review of “Hellcab”

“… trouble made human, McKinney's aggressive physicality heightens the play's menacing tension. His tiny flashes of vulnerability bring emotional shading to a character that might otherwise be a flat-out villain.”

Christine Dolen, Miami Herald, Review of “Streamers”

“Sheaun McKinney ... softly but with assurance transforms Jefferson from a defiant prisoner to a dignified young man about to die .”

Christine Dolen, Miami Herald, Review of “Streamers”

“The most magnetic performance, however, comes from Sheaun McKinney as Ardell… Whenever he is onstage, the play feels more urgent, stylish and intense.”

Christine Dolen, Miami Herald, Review of “Streamers”

“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”

“Sheaun McKinney is a cute, cute kid. If there were a "menace scale" for actors, he'd rate somewhere between Andrea McArdle and Haley Joel Osment. At least, that's how it went until you caught him in Jesus Hopped the "A" Train. For ever after, when you saw him on the sidewalk, you made sure to cross the street. In Jesus, McKinney played a prison guard who was either psychotic or principled, depending on what moral perspective you brought to the show. He thought his inmates were scum, and he treated them as such. Even when Bechir Sylvain, who played a serial killer turned deeply peaceable spiritual guru, was trying to inspire his fellow inmates with righteous, well-meaning pep talks, McKinney was there to rub his face in shit. He seemed to enjoy it. For a great many nervous moments, one suspected McKinney really wanted nothing more than to drag his costars out behind the theater and shoot them. The hell of it is, his convictions were so firmly held and so ardently conveyed that you almost wanted it too.”

Miami New Times - Best of Miami, 2008 “Jesus Hopped The "A" Train ”

“And McKinney, playing Satan, star witness for the prosecution, has always been charismatic, but here he's literally otherworldly. He employs the same slow drawl he used in GUaR's other Guirgis play, Jesus Hopped the A Train (in which he played a sadistic prison guard), but here he's funnier, creepier, and more refined — all merriment and brimstone, wealth, and taste. This Satan could tempt you to sin, and make you like it.”

Miami New Times - Review of "The Last Days of Judas Iscariot ”

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BILL COBBS

2006 Trenton Film Festival Best Actor - Narrative Feature

Stalwart African-American player who has lent his comfortably weathered features and world-weary demeanor to many supporting roles on stage and screen. Cobbs convinces whether playing stubborn yet dignified fathers, melancholy denizens of bars and pool halls, or sympathetic authority figures. A latecomer to acting, Cobbs began in community theater in his native Cleveland while working as a car salesman. He moved to New York where he worked with the prestigious Negro Ensemble Company. He made his Broadway debut in "The First Breeze of Summer" and later appeared in Anthol Fugard's "Master Harold...and the Boys" and "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom".

Cobbs has been a regular presence on TV since the late 1970s. After snaring a small role in "King" (NBC, 1978) he went on to the "NBC Live Theater" presentation of "The Member of the Wedding" (1982) and "Rage of Angels" (NBC, 1983). Cobbs worked with Black theater legends Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee on their PBS anthology series, "Ossie and Ruby", starring opposite Dee in "My Man Bovanne" (1987) directed by Davis. He was a regular on the short-lived ABC sitcoms "The 'Slap' Maxwell Story" (1988) and "Homeroom" (1989) and did guest shots on numerous series including "Designing Women" and "LA Law". Cobbs may be best remembered for his portrayal of Lewis Coleman, the strong traditional father of Regina Taylor's character on the acclaimed dramatic series "I'll Fly Away" (NBC, 1991-93) a role he reprised for the PBS TV-movie conclusion "I'll Fly Away: Then and Now" (1993). He appeared in "The Sopranos" (HBO, 2000)

Cobbs has also appeared in over 20 features since the late 70s including "The Brother From Another Planet", "The Cotton Club" (both 1984), "The Color of Money" (1986), "Bird" (1988) and "New Jack City" (1991). More recently he played Whitney Houston's manager in "The Bodyguard" (1992), The Hudsucker Proxy ( 1994), an old partner of defrosted anachronistic cop Sly Sly Stallone in "Demolition Man" (1993), "Ghosts of Mississippi" (1996), "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer" (1998), "Enough" (2002), "The Final Patient" (2005), "The Ultimate Gift" ( 2006) and "Night at the Museum" (2006)

Copyright © Baseline 2006.

“Very fine acting of Bill Cobbs...listening to Bill Cobbs speak the Manardi's lines is akin to listening to a favorite uncle(with a deep secret) regaling us with his great stories. The fine craft of Bill Cobbs...Cobbs himself truly seems to be Daniel Green (the character)...Bill Cobbs is perfect

J.C. Mack III worldsgreatestcritic.com.

“great actor in Bill Cobbs, Cobbs' talent is evident throughout...”

Dave murray www.joblo.com.

“Cobbs is a seasoned pro... makes you want to watch if only to hear a few more of his stories.”

David Johnson dvdverdict.com,

“Cobbs is as always, deeply impressive in his role.

Christopher Null Filmcritic.com