CRIS FRANCO (PLAYWRIGHT): Mexican-born, Angelino-raised Cristobal ‘Cris’ Franco has combined his bilingual/bi-cultural roots with his natural comedic bent to achieve his life’s goal: to create engaging, intelligent, humorous works that both entertain and acculturate their audience as to the unique contemporary ‘American-Latino’ experience. The result has been a multi-faceted, award-winning career as a writer, actor, producer, stand-up comedian, talk-show host, TV journalist, and openly gay activist who has broken down barriers and built cultural bridges by way of communication through comedy. Cris’s career, spanning thirty-plus years, includes multiple acting and writing credits for both stage and screen, including works important in the history of Latino television—writer for the first Chicano sitcom, A.K.A. Pablo; Head of Comedy for first the bilingual talk show, El Show de Paul Rodriguez; cast member of the original company of Zoot Suit by Luis Valdez and El Teatro Campesino. Cris has been a part of many award-winning projects—writer/performer for the Emmy Award-winning PBS series, Square One Television and writer for the Alma Award-winning children’s series, Puzzle Place. He has garnered awards for his ten years of work on PBS, especially for his critically acclaimed talk show, The Cris Franco Show. In 2011, for his comprehensive and enduring work in documenting the contemporary American Latino experience in “a bold, inventive and truthful manner,” his alma mater, California State University Northridge, requested that Cris donate his papers and original show tapes to their media archives. While compiling, reviewing and cataloguing these documents, Cris began reflecting on his life’s journey and started penning his play 57 CHEVY.
http://www.thevistapress.com/ric-salinas-stars-in-57-chevy/
--The Vista Press