Saturday, March 9, 2013

DETROIT '67...it blew me AWAY!



 The 1967 Detroit riot, also known as the 12th Street riot, was a civil disturbance in Detroit, Michigan, that began in the early morning hours of Sunday, July 23, 1967. The precipitating event was a police ...raid of an unlicensed, after-hours bar then known as a blind pig, on the corner of 12th (today Rosa Parks Boulevard) and Clairmount streets on the city's Near West Side. Police confrontations with patrons and observers on the street evolved into one of the deadliest and most destructive riots in United States history, lasting five days and surpassing the violence and property destruction of Detroit's 1943 race riot. Sounds like an unlikely scenario to use as backdrop for a play about family but in Dominique Morriseau's DETROIT '67 family is most certainly the tie that binds.

Last nights performance at the Public of DETROIT '67 was a spellbindingly perfect theatrical event arising from a powerful combined effect of a unique set of circumstances: superb acting, extraordinary direction and a mesmerizingly powerful play! Humor, ferocity and keen feeling are abound in all three. There was not a weak link. Rarely do we see such strong vivid portrayals of African Americans with an undeniably deeply-rooted familial bond, on stage, screen or television, especially today.


Tolstoy told us, "All happy families are alike, and each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." So is the case with the Poindexter family and their friends in Detroit in 1967--they are truly unhappy and happy in their own way. This family is fiercely funny and bitingly sad. DETROIT '67 is a turbocharged family drama about survival in the extreme circumstances of racial discord and riots in Detroit in 1967. What a combination! It will blow you away! It is sensationally entertaining! This is theater that will keep you hooked with shocks, surprises, delights with a heart moving core. It is a must see American theater game changer.

I am so thrilled and proud that this American story is coming to the National Black Theater in Harlem!  Dominique Morisseau is letting her 1VOICE be heard and the pen is her sword. How will your 1VOICE be heard?


Erich McMillan-McCall
Founder/CEO/Executive Director of Project1VOICE, Inc
www.project1voice.org
erich@project1voice.org


3rd Annual 1VOICE! 1PLAY! 1DAY!  6/17/13  A SOLDIER's PLAY by Charles Fuller
1st Annual Project Young Voice  4 LITTLE GIRLS: Birmingham 1963 by Christina Ham 9/15/13
SAVE THE DATES!



http://www.classicaltheatreofharlem.org/buy.html

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