In the heart of Detroit's Oakman Boulevard neighborhood, the
Detroit Repertory Theatre is doing more than just putting on shows—it’s a creative cornerstone, introducing economically marginalized people to theater and providing a stage for voices often unheard.
“Live theater is a great unifier,” says Executive Artistic Director Leah Smith. “
There is nothing like coming together in person, with strangers, and sharing the room with living breathing artists performing in front of you—you become one with the performance. Especially in this time, this digital age, exacerbated by the pandemic, we need to come together, out of isolation, and experience storytelling, live, together with our fellow human beings.”
The nonprofit Detroit Repertory Theatre is known for its historically diverse casting. Founded in 1957 by Wayne State University students, the Detroit Repertory Theatre began as a children’s theater, touring parks and schools. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, children in its audiences “were seeing Black and white actors together on the stage for the first time,” Smith says.
Historically, the theater sought the best local talent, both on stage and behind the scenes, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation or disability. The Detroit Repertory Theatre continues to launch the careers of Detroit- and Michigan-based artists.
“That casting policy [focusing on diversity] has guided all our programming since 1957,” Smith says. “We have the theater talent here. We want to destroy the myth that the most talented people are on the coasts. They are right here in the state of Michigan.”
The Detroit Repertory Theatre is the oldest alternative professional theater in Michigan. It’s a union theater, operating under an Actors’ Equity Association Small Professional Theatre contract. At the premiere of the theater’s current show, “Hysterical!”, Smith gave a shout out to the actors’ union from the stage, as an enthusiastic audience cheered.
The Detroit Repertory Theatre’s ticket prices, which are the lowest among professional theaters in Michigan, enable local residents unable to access other Detroit theater venues to enjoy live theater. Many of its patrons are first-time theatergoers or went to their first play at the Detroit Repertory Theatre and continue coming. Smith estimates that about half of the theater’s audiences “only come to the Detroit Repertory Theatre for their theater needs.”
“Theater has such a boxed-in stereotype of what theater is like and who you’re sitting next to you,” she says. “But none of that applies here.”
“Hysterical!,” which premiered on March 14 and will continue until May 4, was written by Elenna Stauffer, directed by Leah Smith and choreographed by Nandi Jack. The Detroit Repertory Theatre invited playwrights throughout the world to submit scripts and selected Stauffer’s. Starring a diverse cast of six young women actors as a high school cheerleading squad that develops a strange set of tics, the play is a comedy with serious undertones, a commentary on the challenges facing young women in contemporary America. It’s based on a true story of mass hysteria.
“I like to look at the illness as a metaphor for girls and women having to tough it out on their own,” Smith says. “Do we listen to them? When something is wrong, or different, do we respect their feelings, what they are telling us? Or is our tendency to lean into disbelief?”
General admission tickets are
now on sale. Performance day tickets are $30 and advance tickets $25.
“Covenant”, written by York Walker and directed by Will Bryson, will open on May 16. The play, which premiered in New York City two years ago, recounts the story of Rob Johnson, who sold his soul to the devil for skill at guitar. It is “spooky, a thriller,” according to Smith—and hard to produce because of its special effects.
Tickets are on sale now for “Covenant.”
The Detroit Repertory Theatre weathered the COVID-19 pandemic with generous grant support from The Kresge Foundation, Fred & Barbara Erb Family Foundation, Michigan Arts & Culture Council, National Endowment for the Arts, MGM Resorts Foundation and other organizations. During the pandemic, it held a “virtual homecoming” that included a video tribute by Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan.
Today, the theater continues to secure grant funding through its development director but is transitioning from several yearly fundraising events to a single gala, the Season Launch Celebration and Homecoming, to be held in the theater’s parking lot with live music in September. The theater also holds an online fundraising campaign every August.
The Detroit Repertory Theatre offers a legendary actor’s workshop that began in 1975. Tuition is $200, but scholarships are available. “We don’t turn anyone away for financial reasons,” Smith explains. The four-hour classes introduce the principles of acting, voice, diction, character development and scene study.
The workshop welcomes amateurs and adults of all ages and walks of life. Students in their 70s and 80s will often register, believing “it’s not too late,” Smith says. The workshop is designed for local residents interested in creative expression and gaining confidence in public speaking, as well as those who want to pursue a career in acting. For more information:
[email protected].
Two founders of the Detroit Repertory Theatre stayed with the company for 61 years and retired in 2021, handing the baton to Smith as executive director. “This is an opportunity to pause to examine all the things we had done historically and to make changes but keep vital elements safe,” Smith says. The Detroit Repertory Theatre owns two auxiliary buildings, one for storage and another that housed a printing press producing playbills that only closed last year.
Smith shares the founders’ dream of a “cultural pocket” anchored by the theater on Woodward Wilson Street. The dream is big: Smith envisions other theaters, galleries, artist studios and rehabilitated spaces for visiting artists to stay. “There are so many artists without spaces to work,” she says.
But the theater world—and the larger nonprofit world—goes through cycles. In the 90s, the Detroit Repertory Theatre lost significant funding, then gained funding in the following decade, only to lose patrons in the 2008 recession. “Now, we’re on the upswing,” Smith says.
Her dreams for the theater are big—but some of them are happening even now. As Smith continues to push for growth and creativity at the Detroit Repertory Theatre, Woodrow Wilson Street looks poised for a vibrant renaissance.
Resilient Neighborhoods is a reporting and engagement series examining how Detroit residents and community development organizations work together to strengthen local neighborhoods. It's made possible with funding from The Kresge Foundation.