Central Square Theater and Alliger Arts present this Elliot Norton Award-winning play, back by popular demand. Conceived and performed by Boston's favorite jazzman, Stan Strickland, and written and directed by Jon Lipsky, Coming Up For Air is based on Strickland's near-death experience when his life and career flash before his eyes after being overtaken by rogue waves in Hawaii. He explores many instruments, musical forms and dance movements searching for the sources of his music.

NOTE: The August 4th performance is a special Inclusive by Design performance featuring ASL interpretation, audio description, live captioning and live performance painting.

Singer, saxophonist, flutist, actor Stan Strickland has performed throughout the United States, Europe, Scandinavia, the Caribbean, New Zealand and the former Soviet Union. In addition to numerous radio and television appearances, Stan has performed in many clubs and concert halls, including Jordan and Symphony Halls in Boston, Carnegie Recital Hall and Town Hall in New York, and at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Stan has opened for jazz greats Miles Davis and Sonny Rollins, and for Barenaked Ladies. He toured South Africa with The Village People, and was a featured soloist with Take Six and the Boston Pops at Symphony Hall. Love & Beauty, Stan's latest jazz vocal CD, featuring new arrangements of great jazz classics as well as original material, was released by Hawkline Records in 2005. He has performed and collaborated with more than a dozen choreographers including Alvin Ailey, Jose Limon, and Bill T. Jones, and is profiled (along with Blair Underwood and Lamar Burton) in a new film documentary that was filmed this past spring, entitled "Black Man Up."