SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS -- Originally from Southern California, Mendez originally came to San Francisco to go to SF State, where he got his M.F.A. in playwriting. This is his first full-length production.
In this story of an adopted young black man who’s been trained all his life to keep his head down and stay out of trouble, an officer-involved shooting turns everything upside down and suddenly thrusts him in the middle of an increasingly heated national debate.
“I think that it will really challenge people’s perceptions about how we deal with and how we talk about these types of scenarios,” he says. “It was really important to me to really try and be fair to all of the characters involved and not arbitrarily paint anyone as a particular victim or villain. We really wanted to take the time to make sure we did that right and we were sensitive to the material.”