Hello beautiful people,

Hope you weren’t worried we forgot about you. We stayed up late mingling with the lovely actors in the company of Ten Naked Men last night playing at the Ringwald Theatre in Ferndale, MI. Great times, great people, and GREAT insight into the theatre scene.

But totally unexpected! We thought we’d see a show, chat it up a bit, and hand out a few cards. But the theatre Gods were like “let’s throw as much as we can at them. Maybe their heads will explode!”

But for real, even when we wake up late and think “the blog will be tiny tonight” we gain five times the info we got the day before in half the time. It’s madness.

“Max. My name is Max”

We began the day with some chill time: we hit up Mad Max: Fury Road in 3D!

We went to a very well put-together movie theater in Dearborn, MI (a fifteen minute drive from Papa Kirk’s).

Well, apparently that was an issue: the moment Ryan snapped the first photo, at least three people started pointing and yelling from across the lobby.

Needless to say, the camera went back in the car.

Anyway, the movie was basically one long car chase…but what a car chase, man! It was action-packed from first to last; and we think the best fight was between Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron. She kicks some butt in this film. You go girl.

Moments before I was persecuted for photography…

“Hey! They’re doing Ten Angry — I mean Ten Naked Men. We should go!”

After the movie, we scooted across town to the Unitarian Baptist Church where Lorraine Wesley tyler, an artist friend of Kirk’s was showing and selling her paintings.

We showed up hoping to see Kirk…but he wasn’t there. So, we divided and conquered: Ryan took on a couchfull of lovely seniors while Rory took on one lovely senior named Eliana.

Rory began speaking about a very interesting collage depicting a women who was doing a younger woman’s hair. The most interesting thing about the image was a bottle in the background labeled “YOUR NEEDS”. Eliana gave the explanation that you need certain things to make your hair look good. More on that later.

A budding photog in the works.

After giving the spiel I popped question “Should a young artist move to Detroit as opposed to New York, Chicago or Los Angeles?” Eliana answered saying “Nothing beats New York…but Detroit has a lot to offer culturally. Detroit has what New York has on a smaller scale.” I’d call that a complicated “yes”.

She went on to say that she knows a visual artist who work in both cities AND a Detroit-based actor who had worked with Clint Eastwood on a film shot in the area. Hopefully she’ll give us the hook-up.

We met back up in the atrium and spoke to Lorraine. She was very encouraging of our idea. She was able to support her artmaking by teaching French in school. She’s retired now and paints for fun.

Lorraine and her friend

However, our talk was cut short when she realized she needed to restock the snack bar. Rory ferociously jumped at this opportunity and helped out.

While putting out the cheese and crackers I had a chance to ask Lorraine what she meant with the “YOUR NEEDS” label (Eliana heard this and skedaddled over to hear the business). Her answer went something like this: “When you go to the beautician you say things you don’t normally say and you get your needs that way”. The need for connection. Again, we see the threads of what they are doing at the Social Club Grooming Company; it’s an opportunity to dialogue with people who are there to listen. Every person that we spoke to at the gallery was an avid supporter of the theater. They were very excited about the possibility of another theater opening up in Detroit. We’ll need supporters who care about the arts and theater just like these individuals do if we are going to make it here.

“Oh, honey, everything’s better than Detroit”

After dropping the leftover food off in the fridge, we scooted back across town to Ferndale to see Ringwald Theatre’s Ten Naked Men (“very different from Twelve Angry Men” as Richard Payton pointed out in a comment on Day 5’s blog).

Everywhere seems to take us 10-15 minutes to drive, it’s pretty convenient.  By the way, Ferndale has working parking meters! And they do not top out at one hour.

Take that Gary! 

The show was quite revealing: we literally saw ten naked men…about three minutes in. We saw these men in various levels of undress in fast-paced vignette-like scenes depicting the life of a working actor in Los Angeles. These vignettes built on one another to tell the story of a Detroiter who moves out to LA with his best friend to make it big — apparently, Shakespeare wasn’t paying the bills for this classically-trained go-getter.

All of the characters in the play are gay, very forward-thinking. However, all of them but two of the actors are caucasian, a theme we can trace from the Slipstream’s work as well.

Again, this begs the question: is there theater here that reflects the demographic of this 80-85% black community? If not, why not?

Anyhow, we stayed after and spoke to as many of the actors as we could as well as those managing the theater.

We gained a LOT of insight.

Ryan spoke to an actor named Dennis Kleinsmith who gave the insight “theaters in Detroit take more risks”. He also said the financial risks are lesser than in Chicago or Los Angeles. He lived in Seattle during the Dot Com boom, then lived in LA for a long time (has 16 credits on IMDb), and eventually moved back to Detroit five years ago because the cost of living was so high. He also said “finding a nexus point” or an area of high activity, was important when deciding a location for a theater.

As Ryan chatted up Dennis, Rory approached the actor Ben-Ra Wright who, interestingly, is moving to LA (parallels to the show, anyone?) He is moving out there with his good friend, both from Detroit, because they want to be cast in things. He said “I want to be cast in things. Here there are opportunities, but you usually have to make your own stuff.” He went to East Michigan University for theater; she went to SUNY Purchase. He writes and is working on his own film project; she sings, among other things (check out her Sound Cloud, it’s pretty legit). They said that we should check this out: The Mosaic Youth Theater of Detroit performs the Public Theater of New York’s public works musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest” (quoted from the Mosaic’s website). Very interesting. Too bad we’re booked.

Then we ran into Richard Payton, who we met the night before at Slipstream (he was just as hilarious without a southern accent and highfalutin morality; can’t wait to see him in full drag in Earnest, btw).

Afterwards, I spoke to Alex D. Hill who played Steve, an “escort” in the play (as his character calls it). He said “yes” to the question. When asked how he feels about the city he said “Love it and hate it: I see what it was and what it is. Breaks your heart.” He says, though, that the bad rep is not totally founded. When the blackouts hit Detroit a few years ago, people called him asking “are you okay?” thinking there would be violence in the streets. To the contrary he said “people were outside grilling, drinking and having a good time since it was hot inside without air-conditioning.”

He was fount of historical information about the city, dating the riots back to July 23, 1967. He cited the city taxes as part of the problem: only downtown had property taxes, which many people couldn’t pay. This is interesting, since we hear different answers everywhere as to why the riots broke out. More on this in the podcast.

Lastly, he advised when making theatre in Detroit “the grittier [the work] the better” — they’re not afraid to get their hands dirty around here. In fact, it seems that if the stakes are high it would make little sense if people come away clean. One thing that comes up again and again is Detroiters’ intolerance for dishonesty. “We have no patience for bullshit” says James, the narrator of the show (who did go the full monty, by the way).

This was corroborated by the Executive Director, Jamie Warrow, who said that she recently saw a play here and was so excited by it she went to a production in Chicago. She said they were comparable, but the Detroit production was grittier, they really “went there”, if you will.

Both suggested opening a theater in Midtown or Corktown — then revised saying Corktown was prime: “really cool and the neighborhood that’s being renovated right now.”

Simultaneously, we spoke to Artistic Director Joe Bailey who gave a “yes” when I popped the question. He went on to talk about the divide between equity and non-equity houses, that getting an equity card limits the number of opportunities; Alex nodded and assented. Furthermore, the smaller companies band together for a general audition at the beginning of the season (I think they said March).

Then we talked the ear off the Marketing Director Meredith Deighton. She says that she works a lot with social media to connect to audiences, and sometimes goes door-to-door. “That’s what you’ve got to do”. James later corroborated this saying “people are lazy and unless it’s slapstick pie in the face they don’t get it.”

Meredith works five jobs in Detroit, mostly theatre gigs except her pet-sitting job (which currently also provides housing). She acts at multiple theaters as well as her admin role at the Ringwald and a teaching position with an after school acting program for high school students. Topping it all, she hires herself out as a Disney princess at birthday parties (anyone looking for a prince? I’ll take that gig).

She ended saying “There’s a lot of passion in actors aged 22-35…it’s kind of the place to be.  

Afterwards, we went to a bar called the Emory, owned by a local singer/songwriter John (nice guy, talked for a while, encouraged us to move here). 

We put our notebooks down at that point, but kept our ears open. We learned very quickly that these actors are fun-loving, generous people: they invited us to sit with them and were very interested in our goals. From the conversations we had about art, it was clear that Meredith was correct — these people are passionate. Also, they were very willing to share what they knew about their city. James went into great detail: “We have no tolerance for bullshit…everything has always been hard in Detroit, so things being hard is no excuse for laziness”. He described this laziness more saying “on election day if even just raining they won’t go vote.” 

Given that, how much would it take to get an audience into the theater? Meredith’s door-to-door suggestion seems pretty necessary, especially if we want to draw an audience from the larger community. We know that relatively few Detroiters make it to the theater, which Kirk attributes to lack of exposure. So, if we expose them, they will come. 

Every day we find out at least five new things. Those five new things to five new things each and it just expounds from there. This demonstrates one of two things, if not both: 

1. There is a lot going on (said directly by many Detroiters). 
2. People want to share their knowledge with us. 

Either way, the situation looks positive.

All the love in the world,

R&R