Experience the 65-35 ratio in MSU’s newest play, which details the lives of several couples living in an integrated neighborhood in Detroit. In the play, they try to keep a 65 percent white population to make sure buyers won’t be intimidated by the 35 percent black population. Theater graduate student Brandon Piper, who plays Fletcher Hazelton, and director Chaya Gordon-Bland narrate the group’s final dress rehearsal.
It’s 1967, and Detroit is crumbling to the ground.
Race riots have torn the city apart as vandals smash windows and thieves fend for themselves among the unwatched stores. The riots arose from a storm of integration, which pushed tensions among races to volatile levels.
It’s a grim backdrop, but this is where the play “Palmer Park” takes place.
“Palmer Park” — written by Detroit native Joanna McClelland Glass — premiered Tuesday night in the Auditorium’s Arena Theatre. Although it is set in the late 1960s, director Chaya Gordon-Bland said the play still resonates today.
“Detroit, in many ways, has never fully recovered from these events and the climate that spawned these events,” Gordon-Bland said. “With the economic (downturn) that we are going through and the way Detroit divisioned within that, Detroit is really feeling a much sharper fallout from that.”
“Palmer Park” details the lives of five couples of various races who have moved into a middle-class neighborhood in Detroit immediately following the riots. Community members attempt to band together to integrate their neighborhood, but with so many conflicting perspectives, it’s difficult to accomplish, Gordon-Bland said.
“One of the themes that is fairly resonant throughout the show is some of the differences and collisions between the idea of racial integration and class integration and where class and diversity collide,” she said. “I think we can all say we want to promote diversity, but what are the complications of diversity? What are the different aspects and sides of that and how is it truly implemented?”
Theater graduate student Brandon Piper plays the role of Fletcher Hazelton, who moved to Palmer Park with his wife, daughter and dog two months prior to when the story takes place.
Piper grew up in southern Indiana, near the Kentucky border, and said he experienced very little prejudice growing up. By performing in the play, he said he found a new appreciation for his upbringing.
“Race was always something that was pretty apparent to me in my life,” Piper said. “It really has provoked my thoughts about how lucky I was to live where I did, but also how sheltered I was to an extent about what was going on around me.”
Economics senior James Desmond was at the premiere because he wanted to see how the issues discussed would translate to the stage.
“It’s much stronger in person seeing people in our own age group acting it out,” Desmond said. “I can see myself in the situation better.”
Tuesday night’s premiere was the play’s American premiere and also is the first of 11 productions of the play to hit Big Ten campuses. The Shared Script Project allows each Big Ten school to host its own productions of the play, which is the first effort of its kind, Gordon-Bland said.
“This is an unprecedented initiative,” she said. “This is the first time anything of this kind has happened amongst the Big Ten drama departments.”
“Palmer Park” runs until Sunday and tickets cost $8 at the door.
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