Theater in Michigan

On Saturday evening I interrupted my intensive movie-going to attend a performance with live actors.

I heard that Metropolitan Detroit has the most theater seats outside Manhattan. I don’t know if it is (still) true. If it is true a big reason for our claim is the Fox Theater, which seats about 5000 (and I was there for a sold out performance of A Prairie Home Companion back in 2012).

The Detroit Metro area has a large collection of small theaters doing live shows spread across the area – Planet Ant in Hamtramck, Ringwald in Ferndale, Tipping Point in Northville, Meadow Brook in Rochester, Detroit Repertory in Detroit, and lots of others I haven’t been to yet and know very little about and even more theaters that pop up and disappear without a whole lot of notice.

There are also the big guys like the Fisher and its Broadway in Detroit, The Purple Rose in Chelsea (on the far side of Ann Arbor so maybe it doesn’t count as part of the Detroit scene), and Hilberry and Bonstelle, both part of Wayne State University.

I went to one of these small theaters on Saturday, perhaps the smallest I’ve been to. This is the Slipstream Theater Initiative in Ferndale. I think this company shares space with a couple other companies. I counted 26 seats in the performance space (we filled 19 of them) and a “stage” that is pretty small.

The play was Tales from the Mitten written by the performers Luna Alexander and Dan Johnson. The name refers to the lower peninsula of Michigan which looks like a mitten. For much longer than I’ve lived in the state when residents are asked where they live (or where their cottage is) the hold up their right hand and point. Even the area north of Port Huron and east of Saginaw is known as the Thumb.

This show is about life in the theater world in Michigan. Alexander and Johnson are playing themselves. Each scene is the two of them auditioning for roles in Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream as part of some town’s Shakespeare Festival (there really is one in Jackson). So each scene begins with Alexander arriving late for the audition and finding Johnson sitting there. I’m sure the actors had to pay close attention – now we are doing the sixth version of this dialog and it ends up here.

The rest of the scene usually doesn’t portray the actors auditioning (though in one scene they are instructed to swap the leads in Romeo and Juliet). Rather, they got caught up in some part of the audition process. Are they aiming to join Actors Equity, which would give them decent pay and benefits, but would price them out of the smallest theaters? Alexander asks the audience is this the audition where I have to decide whether the role is worth the sexual advances of the director? Johnson asks whether it is worth taking on the role written by a well-meaning white author, directed by a well-meaning white director, for the benefit of a well-meaning white audience, yet that role is riddled with offensive (or at least clueless) black stereotypes. Are they the right “type” of the part? When they are asked what they do how to deal with the reaction: An actor in *Michigan?* It’s a hobby, right? They ponder how to get bums in seats – the well known plays already done a zillion times or something new and current – while keeping their own artistic development from withering.

In between scenes we hear a voice doing takeoffs of the Pure Michigan ad campaign. In the fall Michigan has the best apple cider – which you can enjoy while creeping along the many Michigan highways because nobody has yet removed the orange barrels from the summer highway construction season.

The heart of the show is when Johnson and Alexander take turns at an audition where they are told not to act, but to tell why they got into theater. Both stories were quite touching. I’m sure they were true.