Allan Appel Photo
Akintunde Sogunro as Sly and Singleton as Lank debate the cost of buying a bar business.
Does Marvin Gaye’s voice sound more velvety on a 45 RPM or on that new-fangled eight-track machine?
That’s one of the central questions in a play set four decades ago in a struggling but deeply loyal black family during the racial rioting — and profiling — of the 1960s. Unfortunately, it’s anything but dated.
Collective Consciousness Theater is inaugurating its new season and new space at Erector Square Thursday evening with a production of Dominique Morisseau’s award-winning Detroit ’67, in which the power of family ties is put under pressure.
Although the play was written well before Ferguson and the killing of Trayvon Martin, its ongoing relevance was part of the reason theater founder Dexter Singleton sought out Morisseau. He secured his fellow Detroiter’s permission to mount the New England premiere of her impressive and beautifully crafted work.
The play “goes back to when Detroit was the Paris of the Midwest,” said Singleton.
In addition to producing, Singleton plays Lank, one of the four roles in this character-driven work. He’s a seductive dreamer who, along with his sister Chell (Kayla Monique), has inherited a modest house in the ghetto.
The siblings run a makeshift after-hours party joint in the basement. Lank wants to turn their hustle into a legitimate business. He’s an entrepreneur, although that word is never used in this play. They speak in strong Southern lingo, peppered with what Singleton called “Detroit coolness.”
Director Massie and producer Singleton.
That’s where where the fancy new eight-track comes in. With it, the sound of Motown — just emerging then — will sound perfect, attract customers, and help Lank and his pal Sly (Akintunde Sogunro) buy a legitimate club on 12th Street that’s just come up for sale.
Chell objects to risking their inheritance, but Lank charges ahead. The riots intervene, making Lank’s every visit to the club to finish the deal a journey past out-of-control cops. The last ingredient in this potent mix is the arrival of Caroline, a mysterious white girl that Lank rescues because she’s also on the run from cops — but for different reasons.
Thus the events in Detroit external to life in the basement drive the character struggle there, without a single burning store, tear gas canister, beating, or shooting ever appearing on stage.
Records from the Temptations, Martha and the Vandellas, Marvin Gaye, and others all have musical roles to play as well.
Monique and Woods rehearse a dance scene.
When Chell and her pal Bunny (Raynetta Woods) dance to to Smokey Robinson’s “Shop Around,” (pictured) they are trying to find out if the new sounds, on new equipment, with a new presentation, can launch them into business and eventually the middle class.
“I’ve never seen music be so integral a part of a production,” said Massie, who is also the assistant artistic director of The Elm Shakespeare Company.
Singleton said he hopes Morisseau will be able to come to one of the performances and be part of a talk back. She’s among the rising African-American theatrical talent whose work focuses on the sharp social justice issues at the heart of Collective Consciousness Theater’s mission.
Sogunro as Sly putting a move on Bunny, played by Woods.
In more mainstream theaters, Singleton said, “it’s usually just August Wilson and Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun. We don’t often get to see plays about African-American subjects with good, strong, African-American content,” he added.
Detroit ‘67 was the winner of the 2014 Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired by American History. The play runs at Erector Square’s Studio D, in Building 6 West, Thursdays through Sunday from Nov. 13 to Nov. 23. There will be programs reaching out to the city’s young people in connection with the play. For details and for tickets, visit Collective Consciousness Theater’s site.