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Dominique Morisseau

Dominique Morisseau is an American playwright and actor who has authored numerous plays, three of which are part of a cycle she is currently working on called "The Detroit Projects." Her second play in the series, Paradise Blue, is currently still in development at Signature Theater.

Early Life

Morisseau grew up in Detroit, Michigan with her mother and father. Her mother's family is from Mississippi and her father's family is from Haiti. Later she attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor where she received her BFA in Acting. There she met her husband, Hip Hop artist J. Keys, who is also from Michigan. J. Keys grew up in Southfield and Detroit. The couple married in 2013 and their wedding dance went viral on YouTube, Good Morning America, Channel 4 Detroit, Huffington Post, and Yahoo.

Career

Acting

Morisseau's performance career began as a live poetry speaker, primarily performing for her home town community: Harmonie Park in Detroit. She began her career in the theatre as an actor and received a BFA in Acting from the University of Michigan. After college, she continued acting and worked with several organizations over the years. At the Lark Play Development Center she worked as an actor in a developmental production of The Mountaintop by Katori Hall, work shopping the role of Camae. In 2013, in a production at Actor's Theatre of Louisville, she reprised the role of Camae once more. She continues acting now, but has stated that she would not act in any of her plays' premieres.

Playwriting

Morisseau began writing plays in college and has continued to write, earning numerous awards and honors for her work. She has stated that the lack of roles for her at the University of Michigan, is what drove her to start writing plays. She wrote The Blackness Blues: Time to Change the Tune, A Sister’s Story at this time. After college, in 2012 through 2013, she received a Playwrights of New York (PoNY) fellowship at the Lark Play Development Center. She has also worked as a Teaching Artist with City University of New York's Creative Arts Team. Morisseau has said that music plays a huge part in her work and often informs the work that she is writing. "It's a resource and clue to my work, and music plays a unifier among cultural barriers."

Morisseau is on the list of Top 20 Most Produced Playwrights in America 2015–16, with 10 productions of her plays being produced.

Work

The Detroit Projects

Morisseau is currently working on a 3 play cycle, entitled "The Detroit Projects." The three plays (in order) are:

Detroit '67

This play "explores an explosive and decisive moment in a great American city. The play's compelling characters struggle with racial tension and economic instability." It began its development at the Public Theater in New York where it was work shopped. Detroit '67 eventually went on to be featured the Classical Theatre of Harlem with the National Black Theatre. It was nominated for 8 AUDELCO Theatre Awards, and received the 2014 Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired by American History.

Length: 120 Minutes

Paradise Blue

Former musician, Blue, decides to sell his beloved jazz club in order to live out his dreams. He is left with the moral dilemma of leaving his partner, Pumpkin, and his loyal jazz band behind. Morriseau developed this play first at Williamstown Theatre Festival, where it would eventually go on to have its world premiere in July 2015. Paradise Blue continued its development at the McCarter Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, and the Public Theater. For this play, Morisseau received the L. Arnold Weissberger Award (2012), and the Edgerton Foundation New Play Award.

Length: 120 Minutes

Skeleton Crew

The final play in Morisseau's cycle revolves around a group of auto-plant workers, grappling with the likely possibility of foreclosure and impending unemployment. Skeleton Crew received a developmental production at the Lark Play Development Center. Directed by Ruben Santiago-Hudson, this production held its world premiere at the Linda Gross Theater with the Atlantic Theatre Company in May 2016. Skeleton Crew also won Morisseau the 2016 Obie Award Special Citation for Collaboration along with director Santiago-Hudson and the Atlantic Theater Company.

Length: 120 Minutes

Other Plays

Follow Me To Nellie's

Nellie Jackson successfully operates a brothel catering to white men in Natchez. A formidable woman in her late 50s who is widely known to the community for her “heart of gold” Nellie reluctantly gives shelter to Ossie Brown, who is from up North and is working clandestinely to register black voters in spite of murderous opposition from local vigilantes. Ossie falls for Na Rose, a demure orphan raised by Nellie as her surrogate child. Invited by a traveling blues band to be its vocalist, Na Rose reluctantly feels compelled to relinquish her dreams of singing to care for the ailing Nellie, who intends to bequeath her the premises.

Sunset Baby

Kenyatta Shakur is alone. His wife has died, and this former Black Revolutionary and political prisoner is desperate to reconnect with his estranged daughter, Nina. If Kenyatta truly wants to reconcile his past, he must first conquer his most challenging revolution of all – fatherhood.

Length: 90 Minutes

Blood At The Root

A striking new ensemble drama based on the Jena Six; six Black students who were initially charged with attempted murder for a school fight after being provoked with nooses hanging from a tree on campus. This bold new play examines the miscarriage of justice, racial double standards, and the crises in relations between men and women of all classes and, as a result, the shattering state of Black family life.

Length: 105 Minutes

Pipeline

Nya, an inner-city public high school teacher, is committed to her students but desperate to give her only son Omari opportunities they’ll never have. When a controversial incident at his upstate private school threatens to get him expelled, Nya must confront his rage and her own choices as a parent. But will she be able to reach him before a world beyond her control pulls him away?

Length: 90 Minutes

Night Vision

Ayanna and Ezra witness a woman getting beaten on the street by a man in a hooded sweatshirt. After they diffuse the situation they return to their apartment to call the police. However, when they discover how their accounts of the attacker differ, both are left questioning the truth of what they saw.

Length: 10 Minutes

Mud Row

Two generations of sisters in West Chester, Pa. are protecting and defying the legacy of their foremothers. The play was developed in the New Play Frontiers Residency & Commission Program at People’s Light. This play will make its world premiere at People's Light Theater in Malvern, Pennsylvania.

Morriseau is currently a writer for the television series Shameless on Showtime.

Awards

Morisseau was named an Honoree for the Jane Chambers Playwriting Award, which recognizes plays and performance texts created by women that present a feminist perspective and contain significant opportunities for female performers.

She is a two time award winner of the NAACP Image Award, which celebrates the outstanding achievements and performances of people of color in the arts, as well as those individuals or groups who promote social justice through their creative endeavors.

• Primus Prize by the American Theatre Critics Association (honoree)
• Stavis Playwriting Award
• University of Michigan: Emerging Leader Award
• City of Detroit: Spirit of Detroit Award
• Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama, 2014, for her play Detroit '67
• Steinberg Playwright Award
• OBIE Award

Dominique Morriseau Bibliography

“Columbia University Awards the Kennedy Prize for Drama to Dominque Morisseau.” The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, 28 Feb. 2014, www.jbhe.com/2014/02/columbia

-university-awards-the-kennedy-prize-for-drama-to-dominque-morisseau/.

“Dominique Morisseau.” US & Canadian Customers, Samuel French, www.samuelfrench.com/author/100903/dominique-morisseau.

“Dominique Morisseau Is Telling the Story of Her People: The Playwright Wants to Be a Griot for Her Hometown of Detroit and beyond.” American Theatre, Theatre Communications Group, 4 Jan. 2016, www.americantheatre.org/2016/01/04/dominique-morisseau-is-telling-the-story-of-her-people/.

Hallman, Charles. “Home.” MSR News Online, Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder News Online, 8 Apr. 2015, spokesman-recorder.com/2015/04/08/dominique-morisseau-talks-detroit-67-black-theatre/.

Soloski, Alexis. “Playwright Dominique Morisseau Can't Forget the Motor City.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 30 Dec. 2015, www.nytimes.com/2016/01/03/theater/

Playwright-dominique-morisseau-cant-forget-the-motor-city.html.

Tran, Diep. “The Top 20 Most-Produced Playwrights of the 2015–16 Season.” American Theatre, Theatre Communications Group, 15 Sept. 2015, www.americantheatre.org

/2015/09/15/the-top-20-most-produced-playwrights-of-the-2015-16-season/.

Lord Chamberlain Bibliography

Handley, Miriam. (2004). The Lord Chamberlain Regrets…: A History of British Theatre Censorship. London, England: British Library

Liesenfeld, Vincent J. (1984). The Licensing act of 1737. Madison, Wisconsin: U of Wisconsin P.

Megson, Chris. "The Theatres Act (1968), Documentary Theatre and the Actor's 'Overwhelming Reality." Studies in Theatre & Performance, vol. 31, no. 2, 2011, pp. 137-151. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1386/stap.31.2.137_1.

Thomas, David (2007). Theatre Censorship: from Walpole to Wilson. Oxford, England: Oxford UP.

Williams, Gary Jay., and Phillip B. Zarrilli. “Part II, Chapter 4.” Theatre Histories: an Introduction, Routledge, 2009, pp. 190-192, 211.

Worrall, David (2006) Theatric Revolution : drama, censorship and Romantic period subcultures, 1773-1832. Oxford, UK: Oxford UP.