Dear friends,

Saturday these little thespians went to market; Eastern Market, that is.

You could not walk two feet without running into someone in this open-air gathering that spans 43 acres, making it the largest historic public market district in the US. About 40,000 people stopped in on Saturday, even more on Sunday (we’ll get there).

Good thing we had a tour guide: Aj O’neil, the man behind Detroit Bold Coffee Company. We spent about 2 hours touring the market and talking. Then we hit up Mootown creamery where we tried some of his coffee (which was pretty great), eat some lobster mac and cheese, and continued talking.

He had a lot to say. Let’s start with his story: he opened a coffeeshop in a church basement in Highland Park, MI (a small city just north of downtown where he was born). He charged no one at first, but had a small collection. This grew into an engine for revitalization when he recently pledged “ALL after tax profits from the sale of [the Million Bag March blend] will help build DETROIT BOLD COMMUNITY CAFES. They’ll be neighborhood anchors that attract new investment while serving as gather places to commune, converse and create. Buildings will be fixed up, people will be trained and ownership will be turned over to the neighborhoods.”

Also, he organized the Assembly Line Concert, the longest continuous concert at the time according to Guinness World Records. He did this at a time when people were giving up on Detroit even more than ever.

So he decided to make a splash and “bring attention back to Detroit”, as he put it.

And it did. In fact, it worked so well that the people from Occupy Wall Street called him for advice.

Also, Shark Tank approached him a couple weeks ago and asked him to audition. He turned them down.

Needless to say, his answer to the question “Should a young artist move to Detroit as opposed to New York, Chicago or Los Angeles?” was an immediate “yes”. “This is not about you or me, but us…Detroit has been told what they can’t do for 50 years. I’m one guy trying to tell people what they can do”.

He shared many insights, including something very important: people here have humility. They have to work hard to make things happen, nothing is handed to them. He wrote a novel called the “Lost Town of Humility” in which a collection of gold gained through hard work goes missing then uncovered years later by someone who gives it away. He said that this is a symbolic representation of how he feels about Detroit’s journey at this moment: have to find what is lost and give it back to the community.

As we walked around with Aj we heard some interesting perspectives:

A lady working at a HUMUNGOUS thrift shop: “New York is too crowded, to established…People are uptight in New York; here they’re more down-to-earth.”

A guy selling hot sauce: “Go to California or New York where they have film incentives. The governor got rid ours.”

A waiter who said: “I just bought two vans to start a business that helps out with public transportation”

Also, we ran into a shoe repairman named Mo who works for Kriss Shoe Service, who apparently drinks Aj’s coffee all the time; they met for the first time while Aj took us out! Mo was in the process doing a 24-hour shift that day working at his shoe repair shop. Mo attributed his ability to stay up all day to the invigorating effect of Aj’s coffee.

Mo said “let me be real with you: I speak a different language when I talk to the cops.” Then he demonstrated a higher-pitched voice with a lot of nasality. He also says he speaks with a different vocabulary (consisting mostly of “yes” and “sir”) in an effort to stay on any given officer’s good side — and on the outside of their squad car.

Moe was working with a lady named Ms. West.

Now, Andrea West is a street vendor; but before that, she worked for many years as a manager of government subsidized housing in Detroit. In fact, her bosses punished her by sending her to the roughest projects in the city: Douglas and Jeffries. “They say I ran the place” — no easy feat when talking about a place filled with drug dealers and other hardened criminals. When her bosses said “we can’t provide you any security, Ms. West” she “started forming alliances” with her residents and the people who were around…doing whatever. “A lot of managers wouldn’t walk their area — they were scared. I just took the attitude: don’t show any fear.”

The takeaway here is that she could form alliances, and she did this by trying to understand her residents. She did not come down hard on the criminals (which her predecessor did until someone shot up her office). Instead, she worked with them to make the standard of living in the facilities better. She found a common goal and told them what she needed to make it happen for them.

We then moseyed on over to the Planet Ant Theatre’s Saturday night improv show featuring The Home Team.

This was totally entertaining, man. Like laugh yourself into a stupor funny — the real deal. Ryan was even laughing throughout it!

This is not surprising knowing that Second City used to have a comedy theater and training center in downtown Detroit, their third mainstage theater in North America (disbanded in 2009). Since then, improv has been on a rise here. The Planet Ant itself has been open 15 years and literally anyone who knows anything about Detroit’s theatre scene has pointed us in their direction.

So we were surprised to see a mediocre turn out: about 20-30 people for a Saturday night show! We were expecting a full house (the performers may have been, too; they said that Monday night is usually jam-packed).

Planet Ant is not alone in this predicament: every performance we’ve gone to (only three so far) has had a pretty mediocre turn out. Of course, Slipstream had space for only about 15-20 people; but even Ringwald Theatre’s opening night only boasted about 25 audience members (filled maybe a little over 1/2 of the house).

This has been a theme in our research: the audience is there, just unaware. Of course they exist — downtown is at 98% occupancy for crying out loud.

So what is it?

Another theme has been exposure: most people we talk to don’t know what’s going on in the theatre world. Furthermore, Planet Ant joins the crowd of mostly-white audiences watching mostly-white performers; in fact, I can’t remember seeing a single nonwhite audience member…period; I lied, there was one — the best friend of one of the actors at the Ringwald, the only theater to boast a mixed audience. As for performers, only two weren’t caucasian. Also, all the managing directors, artistic director and other decision-making positions were filled by whites. Again, we’re talking about a city with an 80-85% African American population.

Of course, we have seen very few shows. But these theaters are among the forerunners in the scene. Will this be a trend?

Kirk says “it’s not woven into our culture. Those African Americans at the art gallery, they appreciate art. So we’re there.” He went on to say “If you guys could expose our young people to the theater at a young age — like a summerstock or something — you’ll get an audience. Like your teacher Carl says: we’re ready. We’re low-hanging fruit, guys. Come and get us!”

Furthermore, we have only seen theatre geared towards theatre people. While the concept is very bold and , someone would have to have read or seen Hamlet a lot to have a clear, full impression of what Slipstream did with their production; Ten Naked Men is a play about actors; and an improv show is a very artsy-fartsy event to attend, especially in a city that is not known for that scene (in Chicago it may be different).

Sally Miller of the Blue Field Writers House said to us today “in New York when people are trying to figure out their plans for the evening they say “dinner and movie or dinner and play?” Theatre is part of the conversation there. That’s not the case here.”

Detroiters came out in droves, braving the baking sun to appreciate beautiful flowers at today’s Eastern Market. Is it possible to encourage them to sit in an air-conditioned theater and experience the beauty of a play?

If we end up here, a huge part of our journey will be to make our theater part of the conversation.

Much love,

R&R