North Salinas & Alisal High School poetry clubs team up for "The Ballad of Martin Ramirez"

The North Salinas High School and Alisal High School poetry clubs are teaming up for a multi-media show titled “The Ballad of Martin Ramirez.”
Directed by Mike Roddy, the play runs March 22 and 23 at the Salinas Performing Arts Center at Salinas High School.
Ramirez was a self-taught Mexican artist who spent most of his adult life institutionalized in California mental hospitals. Following his death in 1963, his drawings and collages became some of the most highly valued examples of ousider art.
In 2007, the American Folk Art Museum in New York City opened the first major retrospective of his work. The exhibit travelled to the San Jose Museum of Art later that year.
Roddy said local students are writing poems that will be inserted throughout the story.