Playwright Daniel Medina, whose original drama Below Sycamore plays at Cal Poly this weekend, moved to Los Osos a few years ago—a welcome return from when he last lived there.
“When I was a boy, just like in the play, I got kicked out of my house by my grandmother, and she sent me up to live with my uncle, who was a Zen Buddha guy who lived in Los Osos. This is 1986,” Medina explained during a recent phone call from LA, where he was rehearsing his play with a new cast. “That was my first experience in Los Osos. I got in trouble pretty quickly and got sent to the Paso Robles Youth Authority, which is kind of in the play as well.”
Medina’s faith-driven drama is about two good friends, JD and Chucho, who live in a fictional LA barrio where love, addiction, and redemption collide. JD’s a street hustler falling under the sway of Oso, a drug dealer. Chucho is JD’s loyal friend who’s secretly succumbing to addiction. They both wind up in juvenile hall where they encounter Cecil, a recovery counselor who’s trying to help.
Witness the drama
Below Sycamore—a drama about addiction, poverty, cycles of violence and trauma, faith vs. street code, friendship, and ultimately redemption—comes to Cal Poly’s Spanos Theatre two days only, Friday, Sept. 18, at 8 p.m., and Saturday, Sept. 19, at 7 p.m. (16-and-older recommended; $25 to $55 at belowsycamore.com/tickets or pacslo.org).
“You could easily say that I was both of those characters in my life,” Medina explained. “A lot of the stories are real, and some of the characters are amalgams of different people in my life.”
The idea behind the play developed as he was talking to his daughters about the Book of Job, which chronicles all the calamities that befall an innocent and pious man who, as Medina said, “is just getting his behind handed to him.”
“The only thing that we got out of that was ‘God knows best’ kind of thing,” Medina said, but it got him thinking about the addictive power of drugs and alcohol, and the effects addiction had on his life.
“We started to fictionalize it and then came up with this story about these two boys who are suffering in this cycle of addiction and violence.”
Once he had a first draft in 2018, “a buddy of mine came over to my house and he was looking at the script and he goes, ‘Hey, do you mind if I take it and show it to my buddy?’ About six weeks later, I got a call from Matt Shelton from [San Francisco’s] Shelton Theater, and he said, ‘Hey, this thing needs a little bit of work, but I’d be willing to put it on.’ That’s how it started, with just one weekend, and then it sold out, and then we got two weekends, and it eventually ran for 16 weeks.”
The play was so well received and so powerful in its message that is spawned Beyond Sycamore Ministries to spread the idea that recovery and redemption from drug addiction is possible.
“It’s a very emotional play, and so we’ll get strong emotional reactions where people are crying, crying for joy, or just crying out from being connected to the characters and their trauma. We also have audiences that are roaring with laughter, but they always come away feeling like they witnessed something that was real and pertinent to what’s happening right now.”
Pertinent is right. Drug addiction remains a horrible problem.
‘We do need each other desperately, and this whole show is about a community of people who love each other and are trying to deal with this monster of addiction.’
—Los Osos playwright Daniel Medina
“Back in 2019, when this play debuted on Sept. 19 at San Francisco, people were accidentally getting fentanyl and dying on accident. But now, people are actually purchasing the fentanyl, like knowing that it’s fentanyl. That’s a pretty big shift the wrong way.
“I feel like this material is so pertinent, and, unfortunately, the audience for this type of material is growing. It’s just the truth. It’s sad, but it’s true. And there’s really an audience for this material in every town. Everyone has their story of addiction, and this one is just told through the lens of these two young boys who are 15 and 17 years old and having to make ridiculous choices because the people that they’re counting on are tangled up with the same problems.”
Often the people who would most benefit from seeing the play are the most difficult to reach, but Medina has found that people in recovery, who are attending AA or NA meetings, have responded positively.
“That’s one of the reasons I wrote this. There’s not a lot there for people who are in recovery or even just Christian people. There’s just not a lot of content for them.”
Medina, who’s also a musician and uses some of his original music in his play, has a record coming out “hopefully before the end of the year,” with soulful tracks like “Here,” “Sad Song,” and “Walk On” exploring themes in Below Sycamore. There’s also a graphic novel series of the same name featuring JD and Chucho that explores the dark, parasitic nature of the 1990s LA drug trade.
“I’m also right in the middle of writing a new play, and then there’s a movie that we’re working on that’s based on Below Sycamore. We’ve got a gentleman named Estevan Oriol on contract to do the directing. I feel like there’s a big lane for this type of content for people who want like clean content that has some hope in it. It’s a little bit gritty, but it’s not dirty or vulgar. It’s telling a very sad story of innocence that’s lost on these street corners and the kids who get caught up a little too quickly.”
Some Cal Poly student string players will be playing Medina’s original music as a soundtrack to his play, which only runs twice.
“People need to understand that the addict or alcoholic is very much like a tornado roaring through the lives of the people that he or she loves. Even though the addict or the alcoholic might get sober, that family that the tornado has gone through, it takes them a long time to rebuild. A lot of times, they’re the ones who are paying for rehab or experiencing loss.
“This is also for them. We do need each other desperately, and this whole show is about a community of people who love each other and are trying to deal with this monster of addiction.” ∆
Contact Arts Editor Glen Starkey at gstarkey@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Sept 17-24, 2026.
