Hi I’m John Sloan III and here’s what’s coming up on one Detroit arts and culture the story of an Iraqi woman at Christmas time what’s behind some of Detroit’s historic homes and a play delves into the complexity and beauty of The Human Experience it’s all ahead on one Detroit arts and culture
Support for this program provided in part by the Kresge Foundation the Cynthia and Edsel Ford fund for journalism at Detroit Public TV from Delta faucets to Bare paint Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces Masco serving Michigan
Communities since 1929. the DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit Public TV among the state’s largest foundations committed to michigan-focused giving we support organizations that are doing exceptional work in our state visit DTE foundation.com to learn more Gregory Haynes and Richard Sonenclar Nissan Foundation and by contributions to your PBS station
From viewers like you thank you what up though and welcome to one Detroit arts and culture I’m John Sloan III a detroit-based artist activist founder of Ghost Light Productions and producing artistic director of the obsidian theater Festival and while I managed to keep myself pretty busy I’m
Thrilled to be guest hosting for Satori Shakur as she reprises her role in the groundbreaking play the kink in my hair at Toronto’s Soul pepper theater through December 23rd now because I’m a theater kid at heart the only thing that could make this any better is the fact that I
Get to come to you from Detroit’s iconic Fisher Theater here in the new Ambassador Lounge coming up on the show the history behind Detroit’s black fraternity and sorority houses and the play wild horses from the obsidian theater Festival but first the play nura by Heather Rafael runs at the Detroit
Public theater through December 18th this production focuses on an Iraqi woman who fled her country to the United States eight years ago as she’s trying to celebrate the Christmas holiday the visitor pops up and the family is forced to confront their past let’s take a look
I know you want to sponsor every Iraqi orphan once you open that door you know not every orphan one from Russo from my grandfather’s Church she’s lucky to be alive the least we can do is help with school theater really is a tool to create empathy we’re telling
Stories not to an audience but with an audience she’s starting a week at most two she’s got school in California you see these stories that maybe you don’t know personally but you can watch and say to yourself oh I know what that’s like I’m just saying if you want to hold
On to what Iraq was maybe you need to remember who you were hey who was I Nora is about an Iraqi family that has immigrated to the United States and are really examining kind of what it means to be Americans what it means to be Iraqi Americans and they’re celebrating
Christmas and so uh just like any family as they come together to celebrate their Christmas a lot of things start you know feelings start coming out and a lot of things happen right Alex this is the language this dinner in Arabic how different would it be circling each other for
Hours gossip underneath each word Heather Ruffo is an internationally acclaimed playwright and performer whose work we have loved and admired for a long time and so uh this is a play that we’ve wanted to produce for a long time and the moment was finally right what inspired me to write Nora was the
Convergence of many things one being when Isis overtook mussol and just that sense of um I had Iraqi family in Iraq through multiple Wars for thousands of years my family had been rooted there but that felt like the last straw in a way so since that time and in the last 10
Years I’ve had family now scattered in diaspora across the world and Nora is hugely about family you know it’s a refugee family Living in America living an immigrant life but very attached to back home and questioning if they’re still a rocky anymore that once you leave and if you leave in
A particularly harrowing way do you still have the root system I won’t say anything doctor why not just lecture me on smoking rather than my obsession with my dying identity and another inspiration was I had been working for four years with an Middle Eastern and Arab American Community
Throughout New York City the stories they told were ones of strength and resilience but all of them felt torn between culture and the real pull between what America offers which is a focus on rugged individualism and what Middle Eastern culture offered which was a focus on community and we
All kept saying in this Workshop like why isn’t there something a little bit more in between and that’s a line that Nora says in the play is I need a country in between she wants something that can find the good of both and uplift that do we live for each other or
I need a country in between Heather raffo is incredible she is such an inspiration What drew me to the plain Nora was the fact that it was such a great representation of my culture I read her words when I was in Michigan and she was
All the way in New York and I couldn’t believe how seen I felt by a person I had never met before so I think she is just incredibly powerful and she has an amazing ability to draw people in with her empathy and creativity and warmth and I think it
Does a great job bringing awareness to the refugee crisis and it also does a wonderful job preserving our culture let’s turn it off I can’t that Channel’s not even unlucky it’s even a joke a lot of Texas well you don’t care how many in I’ll be all trapped in malls freezing off
Doesn’t matter but can’t I have a date I won’t even receiving other people’s lives I would like a chance to live mine for once Nora came here with her husband todic and their son yazin eight years ago they live in New York City and they’ve been sponsoring Iraqi Refugee
Named Maryam who lives in California currently and they’re going to fly her out for Christmas dinner and their friend Rafa also lives in New York I believe it Sparks a lot of conversations about what it’s like to live here now and be an American and what they left
Behind from their past no you can live amongst Arabs or Christians or Iraqis anywhere in the world it will never be the community it was not again don’t you feel a great love yes the play Nora Honors that tremendous weight of leaving home in two ways it it
Allows some of the characters in the play to want to leave home to want a new life to want to forget and it allows other characters in the play to struggle with feeling like they have to forget and they have to move on it allows for a feminist female Central character
To be the one who doesn’t want to have to move on and yet realizes that she is being forced to in a way just for her own Survival and she gets to speak a monologue in the end that I would say the entire play was written in order to be able to speak
This monologue in context no wonder so many of us are drowning the responsibility it’s just it’s impossible to bear it’s just a way to be erased I think all audiences can relate to what it feels like to search for a place to call home there are so many moments
And Heather writes this beautifully where we are fighting for the love and then we might have a moment where we lose the love but then we recover and we try and find love again and I think everyone has experienced moments like that for me who else do I know
Dead man and all of our friends all over the world who the most me I mean I think what is most touching about this piece is the way this family navigates love there is a really beautiful scene between Nora and her son that is just speaks volumes of you know how close this family is there’s an also an incredible scene between Nora and her
Best friend from childhood he is Muslim and she’s Christian and they are discussing both just what it was like growing up back home how well they know each other but also the divisions that feel like it there it’s shaping their older lives that didn’t used to be when
They were young and then there’s of course this um incredible relationship between this married couple that has weathered so many things and finally begins to talk about some of their history and I think that in each of those respects audiences will feel like they are both getting to eavesdrop
On very intimate moments in people’s lives but also recognizing things very true to their own experiences of course she doesn’t know why can’t she want a child when you’re a 20 year old orphan running from minniefield Mad Men Who stopped to an American University the last thing you
Want is a burden you know I’ve never heard you so spiteful she has a hold on you I hate see you attached to someone I don’t trust that she could hurt you how it’s a huge honor to be bringing telling this story in the largest Arab American
Community in the country it was also really important to us that this cast in this community be Arab American there’s a specificity to this cast in that we have two Chaldeans in the cast playing Chaldeans we have an Assyrian plain Chaldeans so those are three Iraqi Christians playing Iraqi
Christians we also have Cal Nega who’s an Egyptian movie star a Muslim playing the role of the Muslim best friend it’s just everybody is bringing their own cultural specificity and mixing that with how they see the characters you know we we really got to experiment with this play in a really fresh and
Interesting way and for that I’m I feel really fortunate I hope that the iraqi-american community can come and see this show and see themselves in it I want them to feel the way that I felt when I first read this play that it felt like home it felt like being seen as
Playwrights as I’ll just speak for myself I bear my soul I bear my heart I say the bravest things I can possibly say when I’m performing I try to do my bravest work by embodying that and all of that means that I would never tell
Anyone what to think of it but I think that in this piece if I did have a wish it’s just that they go forth with their family with a stranger with their neighbor into a deeper conversation I don’t know how to let go and hold on at the same
Detroit is filled with historical landmarks and that includes some of the city’s black fraternity and sorority houses city of Detroit historian Baba Jamon Jordan gave us a history lesson on the significance of the black Greek letter organization’s houses and the contributions here in Detroit he teamed up with American black Journal producer
And videographer Marcus Green to provide us with some historical insight African-American Greek fraternal organizations and sororities have been a major part of African-American history for over a century in the United States but not only have they been important in United States history in the African-American history in general
They’ve been a very vital part of Detroit’s black history we’re going to take a tour of this history and these historic places in the city of Detroit that are tied to these African-American Greek letter fraternities and sororities we are now at the home for the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternal fraternity house so the
Chapter is the gamma Lambda chapter in the city of Detroit now Alpha Phi Alpha of course is the first African-American Collegiate Greek letter fraternity founded in 1906 at Cornell University but Detroit’s chapter will be founded a few years after that and not only will they be founded they’ll be led by some
Of the most prominent African-American detroiters in history there’s been two Mayors and the city of Detroit were part of Alpha Phi Alpha Kwame Kilpatrick and Dennis Archer the Alpha Phi Alpha Gamma Lambda chapter moved into this house in 1939. they are the first African-American fraternity and a Greek
Lettered organization to own their own house in the city of Detroit at 269 Erskine we have the Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity house another African-American fraternity founded in 1911 they’re right around the corner from Alpha Phi Alpha’s house or at 239 Elliott also in Brush Park one of his
Most well-known members is a man named Dr ocean sweet and so Kappa Alpha Psi has enjoyed an important history in the city of Detroit and they’ve owned their fraternity house in the city of Detroit since 1945. at 235 East Ferry Street we have the fraternity house of the new
Omega chapter of Omega sci-fi Omega sci-fi is a the second Greek letter fraternity to own African-American Greek letter fraternity to own their own home in the city of Detroit and they own it in this Cultural Center neighborhood in the city of Detroit a couple of blocks away from the
Detroit Institute of Arts and the Charles H Wright Museum of African-American history the Detroit Historical Museum and the campus of Wayne State and they buy this home in 1942 and they would get their home being the second fraternity black Fraternity in the city of Detroit to own their own
Home in 1942 just three years after Alpha 5. at 24 760 West Seven Mile is the Detroit alumni chapter of Delta Sigma theta’s Center in 2010 they moved from a smaller building a little a few miles down the road to this 50 000 square foot building they moved into this car dealership
Transformed it to a Event Center headquarters meeting place office building and really Brain Trust of the alumni chapter of the Detroit Delta Sigma Theta they’ve been a vital force in the city of Detroit and they’ve been in the city of Detroit for years for decades and they’ve owned their own house but
They’ve moved from a house to a center of 50 000 square foot facility that is a major part in the city of Detroit at 24 760. Seven Mile Road at Seven Mile in Grand River Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority Incorporated is the oldest black Greek letter sorority in this country so as we
Are at the 100th anniversary of the akas the akas of course are profoundly involved in Detroit’s history although they do not have a sorority house in the city of Detroit the alpha Royal Omega chapter the Detroit Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority has a foundation and that Foundation has a headquarters
In downtown Detroit at 1525 Howard Street it’s been there since 1987 so for 35 years after kappa Apple sorority Incorporated at least to Alpha Royal make a chapter has had a building that houses the headquarters for their Foundation African-American Greek letter fraternities and sororities are a major
Part of American History a major part of African-American history and a major part of Detroit’s black history one of the major reasons why is because in what these organizations represent is scholarship these are people who have gone to college who are in college and come out and become leaders they become
Leaders in medicine and so many of the African-American doctors come out of these Greek letter fraternities and sororities they cut they their leaders in in law many of them end up as as attorneys and politicians of course two Mayors have been members of Greek letter fraternities of the city of Detroit two
Mayors of the city of Detroit have been members of African-American Greek letter fraternities and they are they have been a major plank in Black leadership and black success and so as the African-American Community looks at these organizations they’re looking at people who have excelled in college people have excelled
In business people have excelled in their careers and professions and people have excelled in political leadership the fact that these organizations still have houses speaks to their determination and their ability to to weather the storm and they’re still around to the in the city of Detroit to this day
A couple of years ago in the midst of a global pandemic and civil Uprising the company I founded goes like creative Productions partnered with the nicely theater group to create to the obsidian theater Festival OTF exists as an exciting new project a platform that highlights and celebrates the rich diversity of stories relevant
To the people of the African diaspora in America we celebrate Blackness y’all in all its presentations and understandings this year we were honored to feature the play Wild Horses by Brandy Victoria Durham the story follows a black couple who goes camping and is faced with a challenging experience brought on by a
Fellow camper earlier Satori Shakur sat down with the place director Naya Reynolds to discuss the meeting behind this production oh we getting started already we’re celebrating celebrating yeah your first voyage into nature I’m excited to be sitting here with NAIA Reynolds director of wild horses for obsidian Fest welcome NAIA thank you so
Much it’s good to be here thank you for having me so can you tell us a little bit about obsidian Fest and your role as director of wild horses yep so obsidian theater Fest is a festival that’s taken place right here in Detroit we have several Productions that consist of
Plays cabarets musicals so I happen to be a director for one of the plays and these are short plays that are put on and so we had a couple weeks to rehearse and then we got into the theater space at the Y and we put on our show we had
An amazing amazing time I’m absolutely honored to have been a part of that process okay and you directed Wild Horses Wild Horses what is that about so wild horses is actually it has a couple of different meanings if you really think about it but what wild horses
Really hit on was the idea of the image of the black person in America so you got this couple this black couple in particular and they decide to go camping and there’s this running joke that black people don’t Camp black people don’t camp this is not something that black
People do so they’re out there trying to enjoy their time in the wilderness and as they’re doing that they’re being looked at as a spectacle in the white iframe so a white woman comes in and you know she eventually presents herself as this friendly person but there’s this
Undercurrent that you know there’s a lot of microaggression happening um there’s a lot of prejudice and assumptions on both ends and things get really really out of control towards the end and it’s just the idea that you know black people are looked at as this thing
To be stared at or looked upon but they’re also something to be afraid of like a wild horse they’re beautiful to look at from a distance but you might be scared to get too close to them because you don’t know what they’re going to do
And it kind of plays on that idea that we are black people we are humans and you know we have a range of emotions and you can’t just pick at us you know just because it seems like something interesting in the moment or because you’re afraid so it really plays on a
Lot of different things and it’s just a really beautiful piece overall they’re here the Rangers no horses look wowed and free what should we take away from the piece I would say the biggest thing to take away from it is that we are not a monolith as black people we are complex
We are beautiful we are afraid we are powerful we are loving we are sad right but at the end of the day we are people and that’s black white any race that you are we’re all people and we should look at each other as such with that eye of
Humanity and not come in by looking at somebody’s color of skin and judging them based off of that and assuming X Y and Z about a person we were just about to take a walk do you think that’s such a good idea walking alone in the dark with him oh
The thug of Assateague that’s enough Jenny now please go I had the honor of being able to meet our playwright and to talk with her we talked to each other on Zoom because she lives out of state but who is the playwright Brandy so she was she was our
Playwright and I was able to really like get an understanding of who she is and just you know where she comes from what inspired her to write this story I think those are important things to know when I am about to go and direct something not that I’m just taking a piece that’s
Already done and I can just do whatever I want with it but I really like to take the time to understand why a playwright went in the direction that they did and then that helps me in the collaboration process to begin to think like that as
Well and then put my own Creative Vision in it so it’s it all works together yeah yeah it all works together how long have you been directing so I’ve been directing for about four to five years off and on I do some other things in the
Arts as well but my heart started with acting and then it moved into directing and I I really see myself in the long run just being behind the scenes and really taking on that directing role I just I love to create stories I love to be given stories and to create from
There too you know it’s like someone giving away their own baby and you just have to take it and build on it what is your mission as a director of stories I really really value the idea of camaraderie and um just empathy even if there’s a play where you
Have characters where it’s like I’m not rooting for that character that character is the bad guy at least we have to have an understanding of where every character comes from there’s a back story even if the backstory is not on the pages we ought to create that
Because these are still people each one of these characters are still people and that’s what I wanted to emphasize even with our other character who most people probably may not root for because it was that idea of we don’t know what this lady’s about what she’s going to do we
Made it a point to make a backstory for her and really understand who she is what her influences in life were because she didn’t just wake up and do whatever she wanted to do just because we needed an opposing character right and to look at the other two characters and
Understand what are their perspectives are there things that maybe they’ve been sheltered from that they might misunderstand about the other side it just I’m very interested in in playing on all of those different things but still telling the same story I love it it’s like you’re a synthesizer of
Humanity yes I’m all about it just working together I mean we already know the world is just so many things so it’s nice to have moments where we can really just come together and create art authentically but also at the same time make sure that we understand even if
We’re all coming from different places let’s try to have an understanding somewhere thank you so much naiah Reynolds it was pleasure talking with you thank you for more information on all of our arts and culture stories go to our website at onedetroitpbs.org thank you for joining me and thank you
To the Fisher Theater for having us that’s going to do it for tonight for everyone here at one Detroit I’m John Sloan see you next time you can find more at onedetroitpbs.org or subscribe to our social media channels and sign up for our one Detroit newsletter support for this program provided in
Part by the Kresge Foundation the Cynthia and edso Ford fund for journalism at Detroit Public TV from Delta faucets to Bare paint Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces Masco serving Michigan communities since 1929. the DTE
Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit Public TV among the state’s largest foundations committed to Michigan focused giving we support organizations that are doing exceptional work in our state visit DTE foundation.com to learn more Gregory Haynes and Richard Sonenclar Nissan Foundation and by contributions to your PBS station
From viewers like you thank you
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