The Detroit Project is a three-play cycle of plays set in Detroit from 1949-2008. Morisseau set each story in this project in a different era of Detroit that definitively shaped the culture and social politics of the city.
She was inspired, in part, by the ambition and love that infused August Wilson’s Century Cycle, a set of ten plays each set during one decade of the twentieth century in Wilson’s hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. As she said, “I was really enamored with the musicality in [Wilson’s] work and I also thought, ‘Wow, how must people of Pittsburgh feel when they read August Wilson’s work? They must feel so loved and so affirmed.’ I wanted to do that for Detroit, mostly because I felt that the narrative I know about the city is not visible. And I want to address the stuff that has been a conflict for us in the way that August Wilson did, and be a griot, a storyteller for them.”
Detroit ‘67 (2013, 2014 winner of the Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired by American History) takes place in 1967, one of the pinnacle years of Motown. This was also the year of the summer race riots in the city. The play follows two siblings who have turned their basement into an “after-hours joint” to bring in extra, needed income. The siblings run into conflict with each other as they have different opinions on what the money should be used for and future plans for their business. The conflict between the characters heightens when an outsider comes to the scene and while the play takes place in the family’s basement, tensions rise as the larger world, specifically the uprising in the city, seeps in and changes their lives. In Detroit ‘67, we get to see a humane perspective about the experience of a family, specifically the lead Black woman, in Detroit living during a monumental time for both music and racial unrest.
The second play of Morisseau’s Detroit Project, Paradise Blue (2015), premiered at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. This play takes place in 1949, when the newly elected Detroit mayor, with support of the federal government and Detroit developers, led the mass-gentrification and destruction of the city’s Black businesses and neighborhoods, specifically Black Bottom. As this was a significant moment for jazz music in Detroit as well, and the play is told from the perspective of a jazz community. In a 2018 interview with Signature Theatre, Morisseau said that Paradise Blue looks at “what happens on the brink of not only a community’s changing identity to its larger city and how people are gonna fight for that, but also women’s changing identities in a male-dominated community.”
The final play of Morisseau’s three-play cycle, Skeleton Crew (2016, Obie Award), had its first performance at the Atlantic Theatre Company. Later, the play was nominated for three Tony Awards after it premiered on Broadway in 2022. Skeleton Crew takes place during the Great Recession in 2008. The story is about four workers who are facing the threat of their auto-factory closing and are at risk of losing their jobs. Morisseau dramatizes how these closings affect the relationships the workers have with each other as loyalties are questioned, and each character must depend on one another to survive. The characters’ power dynamics shift as they make tough decisions to protect their families and their futures. Morisseau highlights that, "Skeleton Crew is looking at the fragility of the working class—how a company will treat them like they are expendable, but how workers have the power to fight against that.” Similar to the other plays in the Detroit Project, music is an essential part of Skeleton Crew. The play incorporates Hip Hop rhythms distinct to Detroit to capture the sounds of the auto-factory and give audiences further insight on the lives of the characters. All of the plays in the Detroit Project tell stories of hope and resilience and the importance of community.