Tramaine Montell Ford Blog

  The Tramaine Experience: An Urban Dramedy • “Montell transforms memory into a living archive, where demolition becomes metaphor.” • “ Cabrini Green Dreams  extends the work’s inquiry, allowing grief and aspiration to sing.” • “A rigorous, humane meditation on displacement in a nation perpetually under renovation.” Theatre Review In  The Tramaine Experience: An Urban Dramedy , Tramaine Montell offers a solo theatrical work that resists both nostalgia and spectacle. What unfolds onstage is neither a sentimental return nor a polemic about loss, but something more exacting: a sustained inquiry into how memory survives when the physical structures that once housed it have been erased. Rooted in Montell’s childhood in Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing project, the piece arrives in the long shadow of its demolition, interrogating not merely what was destroyed but what continues to reverberate—in bodies, language, and cultural mythologies—long after the skyline has be...

HISTORY Cabrini-Green was a public housing project located in the Near North Side of Chicago, Illinois. Here's a brief history: Origins and Development: 1942 : The Cabrini-Green project began as the Frances Cabrini Rowhouses, named after Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, an Italian-American nun who worked with the poor. These were low-rise buildings intended to provide housing for World War II defense workers, part of the war effort to house those coming to work in the city. 1950s - 1960s : The project expanded with the construction of high-rise buildings, transforming into what became known as Cabrini-Green. This included the Cabrini Extension North and South, and the William Green Homes, named after a labor leader. The tallest structures were 16-story high-rises, housing thousands of residents. Peak and Decline: 1960s - 1970s : Initially, these developments were meant to provide affordable housing but soon became synonymous with urban decay, poverty, and crime. The concentration of p...