King, who played Kitch in CCT’s performance of Pass Over last year, has stepped into the role so deeply it’s evident on his face before he ever opens his mouth.
In its collapse, there’s a potential and devastating parallel with her own.īut this show-and the game of economic survival around which it revolves-delivers on every character. In some ways, the show belongs to her: this plant is her life and her home, in more ways than one. She is spellbinding to watch on stage, where she can command the space without any words at all. From the cigarettes Faye keeps in her bra to the strong blend of coffee she brews in the mornings, Pettway has seized on the character’s heart and her resolve, mothering those around her as she also makes a case for herself. As Faye, Pettway is as hard and cool as the steel parts she stamps, but also a survivor in every sense of the word. Dez’ ambition is palpable and so is Reggie’s anxiety, a humming kind of thing that puts one right on the edge of their seat.Ĭast members dip their arms into industry, and come out fully formed. Faye has had a falling out with her son that hits close to home. While the 2008 recession feels huge-because it was, with shock waves that continue still-her setting turns it into a deeply personal story, where it is hard not to relate to at least one of the characters.Īs they take on the playwright’s language, cast members transform into friends and family: Shanita carries a book of baby names and chronicles her dreams so vividly that suddenly she’s that cousin having a baby down the street. Morisseau, whose gift for conversation and humor shines here, pushes the play forward with a driving, sometimes musical rhythm. Cue the main conflict of the play, as he learns that the plant will be closing and confides in Faye only to beg her not to organize with the union.
#SINGLETON VS SKELETON SKIN#
From the moment the audience meets him, it’s clear that something has slipped under his skin and won’t leave him alone. Lucy Gellman Photos.Īll of them report to Reggie (Hall), a longtime family friend of Faye’s who looks out for his subordinates but also wants to protect himself and the life he has built. The show opens March 5 at Collective Consciousness Theatre in Erector Square. There’s his love interest Shanita (Betzabeth Castro), a visibly pregnant worker who assumes that her union job will provide for her coming child even as jobs are cut around her.īetzabeth Castro as Shanita (King is in the background) in Dominique Morisseau's Skeleton Crew. There’s Dez ( Stephen King), a slick romantic who dreams of opening an auto-body shop. In it there is Faye (Tamika Pettway), a longtime member and representative of the United Automobile Workers (UAW) who has been on the line for 29 years, and needs those 30-year benefits before she retires. The cast rotates in and out of a break room, a kind of sanctuary that becomes a frightening, Sartrian in-between place by the end of the show. On the wall, a poster for passenger safety sits like an odd harbinger of the crash that is about to come down on them. The plant is unnamed, but audience members can take their best guesses: most likely a casualty of General Motors’ 10,000 layoffs in early 2009. Set during the height of the country’s 2008 financial crisis, the work follows three members of a “skeleton crew” and their line supervisor in the city’s last automobile stamping factory. It was the main economic line to the city.” In Detroit, the factory life and the plant life was the main job. I’ve been in my adult years in that time, and seeing that perspective as an adult is different. “Unlike Detroit ‘67, it’s set in 2008 and the great recession. “It’s a show that’s really close to my heart,” Singleton said at a recent rehearsal, as actors ran through last-minute lighting tweaks. Tickets and more information are available here.
The play runs March 5-7, 12-14, and 19-22 on the theater’s Erector Square stage.
Nimbly directed by CCT Co-Founder Dexter Singleton, the play marks the third and final chapter of Morisseau’s Detroit Project, a trilogy of works chronicling decades of working-class Black life in Detroit, Mich. Reggie (Jason Hall) is one-fourth of Dominique Morisseau’s Skeleton Crew, opening March 5 at Collective Consciousness Theatre (CCT) in Erector Square. “How am I going to help anyone if I can’t help myself?” he asks. His hands are open and outstretched, as if they’re ready for prayer. His face twists with the weight of a closing automobile plant, a gasping city, a sputtering economy. In front of him, a grown woman is pleading. Behind him, a row of lockers sit almost empty, a sign of just how little life is left in the factory. Stephen King, Tamika Pettway, and Jason Hall in Dominique Morisseau's Skeleton Crew.
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