Should Young Artists Move to Detroit?

Thesis: To investigate whether the city of Detroit could support high level performative art benefiting the artist more than moving to a theater mecca.

How: We will spend a month, from May 10th to June 10th, in Detroit meeting hundreds of people from theatre artists to government officials to people on the street. We will engage in conversations and collect statistics and rudimentary polls to get an overall sense of the culture. Our main question will be: "Should a young artist move to Detroit?"

What: From these conversations, both of us will be blogging every day on our website and publish a photo essay which includes the people we meet and places we go.

Then what?: When we return to Winston-Salem in August, we will present our findings, statistics, and stories we encountered along the way. If we do in fact decide to start something in Detroit, we hope to share our excitement about this opportunity with others.

Why: As young theatre directors we have very little experience. This does not mean that we are incapable of doing the job,but that we have had little opportunity to do so, at least in a professional environment. So no producer in their right mind would trust us with a project that had real money riding on it. We could spend years assisting established directors in theatre meccas.

Or we branch out and do our own thing. This way, we get to do the work we want to do now not ten years down the line when someone finally gives us a shot.

But that begs the question: where do we set up shop?

Theater artists in prominent cities fight tooth and nail for performance and rehearsal spaces. In New York City, even a small theater space with 200 seats averages $15,000 per week to rent; renting a rehearsal space averages $1,000 per week. So if we rehearse a show for three weeks and it runs for two weeks we are already looking at $33,000 for rent; and that is before the tangible costs of production: any design elements, paying actors and crew, marketing, advertising, and the miscellaneous costs that inevitably compound over the run of the show.

We are ambitious; but in New York that ambition would put us in even further debt. We are hungry to make art, but not at the expense of our physical, psychological and emotional health. We are willing to make sacrifices, but would rather not have to live in squalor. All that to say: we need a place that facilitates working at a low cost.

At this point, we find it necessary to explore other options. In our research, Detroit keeps coming up as a place of interest. The city of Detroit used to house the second largest number of theater seats in the United States with over 13,000 seats. You could walk to nine shows within a several block radius, from the Opera to the Ford to the Fillmore—there was so much to choose from. That was the 1950s, when the city’s economy could easily rely on the booming automotive industry. As it progressed into the late 50s and early 60s, the the U.S. auto industry saw stiff competition as foreign imports became popular. In Detroit and all over the U.S., superior foreign automakers were taking over the industry, crippling small American auto companies. Citizens of the once thriving Motor City vanished right along with these failing auto companies. In 1950 1.8 million people lived in Detroit; in 1970 there were a little more than 1.5 million. This trend continued fairly steadily until Detroit saw its population sink to a 100 year low in 2011: 713,777 people. During this time, the unemployment rate was at 27%, 40% of the street lights did not function properly, and there were 78,000 abandoned structures within the city.

We look at that and see what others see: blight, poverty, desperation, tragedy. But we see something else underneath: opportunity.

Every single one of those buildings is a potential home or theater space or film location. The best part is they sell for a fraction of the cost of real estate in other major cities. In fact, for the $33,000 spent on rent in NYC, we could be well on our way to buying a building in Detroit, maybe even start paying for renovations.

That we already know, though. We knew that early on in the research.

So why even go to Detroit?

Because we need to know the people. We need to know if we can tell their stories, if we can connect to them in a way that is meaningful. Only then can we decide if we want to.

For us it is not all about the finance. If we are going to work in a community we want to work with and for that community; we want to make art relevant to those around us. This is also a financial necessity, since we need to an audience to make a profit. (Of course, 60% of theater’s income generally comes from backers, but who backs a theater that no one goes to?)

This trip is a way for us to immerse ourselves in the city and its people while simultaneously probing it for the answers we need. We have a responsibility to use our gifts in the best way possible. This means, of course, that we must do the best quality work we can. This also means that we must do work we are passionate about, otherwise we will not give it our all, thus selling ourselves short and doing our audience an injustice.

Our time in Detroit this summer is meant to determine if we can find financial viability in Detroit as well as if we could see ourselves working within the fabric of the community.