Preview: Matrix Theatre's 15th Anniversary Season
Theater pioneers prove there's no business like show business in Detroit
If, as the saying goes, there's nothing that succeeds like success, then Shaun and Wesley Nethercott must be smash hits.
That's because the Matrix Theatre Company – the much beloved and award-winning production company the married couple founded -has beaten the odds and is about to launch its much anticipated 15th anniversary season.
"Persistence," Wesley laughed when asked for the secret of the troupe's longevity. "And the love of theater."
Shaun agreed. "We never had sugar daddies or anything like that. It's community partnerships. Almost every one of our programs is done in partnership with a community agency. That's how we survived: through this huge network of community collaboration. We're the most collaborationist organization there is!"
What's unique about the southwest Detroit-based theater is that most of its scripts have been crafted by local talent. "At the beginning, we didn't realize we were going to make such a diet of original theater," Shaun recalled. "I think our original mission statement was that we'd be project driven. That's always been maintained, because we are project driven. It's just that through the course of years, we've become more and more committed to original work."
And, in particular, collaborative playwriting. To date, the troupe has staged 74 new plays, most of which were written in a collective fashion by the people Matrix serves.
"We have this decentralized model where we're working with maybe nine different programs and nine individual communities – often isolated or underserved communities – to create a piece with them about an issue or story or something of concern to them," Shaun said.
People ages eight to 80 are served by Matrix's many and diverse programs, the Nethercotts said, with a focus on special populations. The Fisher Players, for example, is a troupe of adults with chronic or persistent mental illness. Radio Playwrights consists of blind and physically handicapped individuals who write radio plays. And Teatro de la Juventud – Theater of the Youth – serves youngsters in the Latino community.
An early effort was an adaptation of "Romeo and Juliet" inspired by the tensions between Detroit's Latino and black communities. Called "South West Story," that piece was the genesis for the troupe's young playwrights programs. "That was one of the first where we did a lot of intensive collective playwriting with a lot of different urban youth," Shaun said.
Why Detroit
What brought the Nethercotts to Detroit was either Divine Intervention or Fate, the two agree.
"It was the only place that Shaun and I found in the United States where we were considered political moderates," Wesley laughed.
The two started dating in 1978 while both were students studying theater at the University of Wyoming. After graduation, the couple moved to Salt Lake City where Shaun earned her doctorate in theater, and after stays in London and Houston, the pair were offered a job working on a project for the United Auto Workers' fiftieth anniversary.
"We landed in Flint to do a project on the Flint Sit-Down Strike because we were some of the few people who actually did community-based collective playwriting, and they were looking for somebody to do that," Shaun said. "From that, it transformed the way we really thought about the social role of theater."
What sealed their fate was a short visit to Detroit.
"Since the beginning of our relationship, we had the idea that we wanted to have our own theater company," Shaun said. "When we came to Detroit and saw that Detroit was really profoundly underserved in terms of theater, it represented for us the land of opportunity, because at the point we came here in '89, we couldn't believe how low the housing and rent prices were. And we knew from previous experience that theater is a marginal business – so low overhead was a good thing!"
They also believed that the city's rich cultural heritage and its social consciousness would make for a very fertile environment for the issue-oriented theater they wanted to create. "The audience was basically here, but there just weren't many theaters to serve them," Wesley said. "So we felt it was ripe to come in."
And ripe it was. For besides the 74 productions Matrix has staged – their children, Wesley proudly points out – the troupe has worked directly with more than 5,000 people and has played to approximately 75,000.
In 1998, Matrix moved into its current home in Mexicantown – a once abandoned, but now proudly refurbished building. "If there's a rubric – we really have done theater from scratch here! Because we create everything from scratch here," Shaun said.
The Anniversary
For its 15th anniversary, the Nethercotts plan to return some of their favorite works to the stage – and to bring back many of those who at one time were part of their Matrix family.
The season opens Oct. 13 with a double bill: "Harpers Ferry" and "Mother Tongue."
"These two may be our strongest works," Wesley said. "The response from audiences to these works has always been tremendous."
"Harpers Ferry" tells of a meeting between anti-slavery abolitionists John Henry and Frederick Douglass days before Brown led a daring raid in 1859. "It's a relationship that's not really well known," said actor/author Dexter Mays. "We had a fantastic time doing the research and putting together what the final meeting between these two men who really loved each other very much must have been like."
"Mother Tongue" invokes the spirits of orators Sojourner Truth and Mother Jones through two contemporary women.
Their ultimate goal for these works, the Nethercotts said, is to have both shows available to tour during Black and Women's History Months.
In their spare time, of course!
"Harpers Ferry/Mother Tongue" plays Thu.-Sun., Oct. 13-Nov. 20 at Matrix Theatre Company, 2370 Bagley in southwest Detroit. Tickets: $15. For information, call 313-967-0999 or log on to http://www.matrixtheatre.org.
