- Hello everybody.

I'm Satori Shakoor.

Welcome to Detroit Performs live from Marygrove, where Detroit's talented artists take the stage and share insights into their performances.

This episode, curated by Obsidian Theater Festival will bring us three deeply moving performances.

First up is Jessica Care Moore with Obsidian Stone.

- Black art is born out of struggle and a deep revolutionary love.

- [Satori] Followed by two Cabaret songs.

"Keep your Head" up and "Who I Am".

♪ Girl keep your head up ♪ ♪ Girl keep your head up ♪ ♪ This is who I am ♪ - Prepare yourself to be moved by their powerful words.

You're about to experience the start of something special right here on Detroit Performs Live from Marygrove.

- [Narrator] Funding for Detroit Performs is provided by the Fred A. and Barbara M. Erb Family Foundation, The Kresge Foundation, the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan, The A. Paul and Carol C. Schaap Foundation, The Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs, The National Endowment for the Arts, the DeRoy Testamentary Foundation, and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you, thank you.

(upbeat music) (air whooshing) - Welcome everybody.

It's my pleasure to be sitting here with John Sloan, III and John, hi, thank you for being here.

- Hey, Satori, how are you?

- [Satori] Good to see you.

- you too - All right, well, what is the Obsidian Theater Festival?

- Well, the Obsidian Theater Festival is a new and growing celebration of emerging black theatrical voices.

in collaboration with Nicely Theatre Group and David Carroll, my production company, GhostLight Productions, just decided to get together and launch, you know, what is really supposed to be a celebration of black theater, and we filmed almost 15 individual pieces ranging from poems to songs to full-scale plays that we film here at Marygrove.

- What is the importance of having black voices in theater here in Detroit?

- So what OTF really does is it helps celebrate voices that aren't traditionally being uplifted.

One of the things we're really, really proud about is that there is no monolithic minority.

There is no monolithic black experience, right?

So while we presented 15 pieces across themselves, there's cabaret songs, there's plays, there's poetry, and all of them speak to that individual writer or composers experience, that poet's life experience and why that is relevant and the beautiful part about it is that there is such diversity in there and I think that that normalization of culture is what the arts can do.

And when you normalize culture that way, then you start to recognize that yes, we are different, but that there are similarities that abound, right?

And somebody else's experience, while that might be separate from yours, does not make them any less or more of a person.

It just gives us all the ability to relate to each other and to connect to each other.

I think on a deeper human level.

- What are some of the pieces that are going to be presented here on stage?

- One of them, which is an original poem by Detroit's own Jessica Care Moore called "The Obsidian stone."

Everybody loves when I say that name, everybody knows Jessica.

She's an amazing artist, writer, musician.

And then there are two other musical pieces, one called "Keep Your Head Up" by Lulu fall and Kris Johnson and another called "Who I Am", which is written by Douglas Lyons.

And it was just a fantastic work and a great collection of pieces.

- [Satori] Thank you so much, John Sloan, III.

- Yes ma'am.

- And I'm very excited to hear this next performance by the incomparable Jessica Care Moore, performing "Obsidian Stone."

(air whooshing) - Black art is born out of struggle and a deep revolutionary love, is a balance of bullet holes and sunlight, is the fight to free Angela and Assata, black art is hand grenades and home girls personified, is anti-lynching movements, is a three quarter round an up close look inside culture, inside the hearts of a people, is unapologetic.

We are a coming together of movements and shared pains and black magic black theater never disconnected from the murdering of black bodies, the trials, the prisons, the voices, the freedoms.

Black theater is the fight for Paul Robeson's passport, the struggle against McCarthyism, the 50s busboy cots, MLK and Rosa Parks marches on Washington, the lives, the rallies, the fierceness of Malcolm's delivery, the Jackie Robinson story on Broadway, the audacity of Lena Horne, the undaunted Harry Belafonte, the swagger of Sidney Portier.

Black art and Cicely Tyson's refusal to take the role and destroying every line she decided to speak.

We storytellers, griots, we molded from obsidian stone, black and precious and honest.

We are the continuum, torch lighters full of promise, rooted in love and absolute proof that beautiful black life exists from the 40s, American Negro Theater and Negro playwrights company to the 1960's revolutionary voices who decided to abolish racial stereotypes and reach for our culture full of natural comedic pauses, a new Afro futuristic mythology that included black and beautiful in the same space from the baritone of Paul Robeson-Harlem Renaissance voice to Langston Hughes, National Broadway Nod in 1935, the training ground for black stories, necessity of black spaces coming to life through the Federal Theater Project.

We are the deep, rich color and visionary pin of Lorraine Hansberry's masterpiece a raisin in the sun.

World shapers in the form of actors, writers, dancers, composers, playwrights, poets, those of us who say we are artists, but understand, we must also represent the posts of the frontline and never bury our faces of our community in our hands or inside our scripts.

We exist in the shadows of sheer eloquence and legend and grace are the wondrous works of art.

We know as Ozzie Davis and Ruby Dee, Amiri Baraka's, the Dutchman, the corners, black artists turned in the stages.

The public we reclaimed as our own private audiences, that smokey bar, we transformed into stage into Zakys colored girls, challenging a world to hear our complicated, feminine voices of survival, the blending of poetry and dance to create currier poem.

Black art makes space for black girls to reimagine the twisted American lie of beauty.

Black art allows black boys to be human, allows black boys to become men, Black art is not for sale.

Black Theater is our safe space, is our kitchen table.

Our Sunday morning, is Ron Milner's checkmates and August Wilson's piano lessons and the fences we built and crossed over and wrote songs too and pulled apart.

Detroit is the historical heartbeat of Black Theater.

The city that gave birth to Lloyd Richards, Ron Milner, and the woman in yellow, Aku Kadogo.

In 1962 an empty tavern on East Adams Street became concept East, walls were painted, seats were installed and magic was born.

A 65-seat theater house dedicated to black community.

A team that included drama associates, founder, David Rambo, Belden Raspberry, a playwright, Dr. Charles H. Wright.

Self-empowered and motivated, the power of collective artists carving the way for Black Theater on the east side to become celebrated national treasure.

Black art creates stages where there are no stages, turns invisible people into champions, 50 years of contribution launched in the basement of St. Augustine's Church on the lower east side of Manhattan in 1970, Detroit Pioneer, Woody King Jr. found a new federal theater home to Baraka's, the "Most Dangerous Man in America", Ed Bullins, The Taking of Miss Janie, a stage that saw the early careers of Chadwick, Debbie Allen, Morgan Freeman, Felicia Rashad, Denzel Washington, Latanya and Samuel L. Jackson.

A space that explored the work of Detroit-raised playwrights, Pearl Clique, Tarika Turk, Karamu Kush and more, black art is resistance writing, black art is resistance writing.

Black art makes love to language, black art is a tool for social change, black art is necessary, is the deep breath.

The recovery of sound, the emancipation of fear.

Black art is obsidian rock, volcanic with sharp edges, a flow of lava full of cool and rapidly growing stories.

Obsidian Theater is the tool that shapes the future, manufacturers the next generation of genius.

A smooth, deep, black, unbreakable glass, a bomb drop, a monologue, a translucent black rock, a perfect Ruby D. Stutter, the birthplace of soul, the unfiltered black imagination lives here.

(air whooshing) - So we're back with John Sloan, III (chuckles).

I mean, what can you say?

- I've been counting myself lucky to be a friend of Jessica's for years now.

And every single time I see her on stage or read one of her pieces, I'm always in awe of that work.

That was a piece that I asked her to create specifically for this festival.

I think is everybody just was able to see her piece in its breadth about the way it spoke to the black experience, about the way spoke to black art, and then just about the power of her delivery and the way that she's able to put everything together.

There are very few performers that have the ability to do that.

- [Satori] She's Brilliant.

- [John] She is.

- Is there anything else you wanna say about it?

- Well, I think the great thing about that is Jessica is an artist that we are...

The type of artist we are trying to cultivate, right?

And so when we talk about the growth of emerging artists within obsidian, it's so they can get that opportunity so they can present their work, so that they can grow, so they can have touch points with somebody like Jessica Care Moore, so they can grow their career in that way.

And I think that's the type of artists that we know Detroit can produce and that we no Detroit can attract.

- In the future of Obsidian Theater Festival, are you going to have like education, development?

- I'm glad you asked that.

Last year, even in our first year, leading up to the festival itself, we did five weeks of educational content.

The goal is to be able to take somebody who might be walking into seventh, eighth grade, who looks at their parents and says, "I want to be in theater."

And their parents go, "Oh my God, "how do you make money doing that?

"I don't know what that is."

And show them a career path.

This is exactly how you make money doing this.

This is how you grow your career.

This is how you can foster that inside of yourself.

So what was a five-week program last year is turning into an eight-week program this year, again on the front of the festival, partnering with schools in Detroit, in Birmingham, across the country, in Atlanta, in DC, to try to make sure that everybody has access to those opportunities.

- So John, what is the message behind Jessica's poem?

- I think Jessica would actually be the best person to answer that question (chuckles).

What I will say though is, when we started talking about what this piece was, we started talking about speaking to black art and black theater, the strength, the resilience, and the history of that.

And so that's why you hear her talking about the history and the trajectory of black art and black theater and about the elders in our community that have created that work.

About how a lot of that work started right here in Detroit and grew across the country.

And is still imbued in the way that we as artists communicate, speak and produce.

- Thank you very much.

And so let's head back to the stage for, "Keep Your Head Up" by Kris Johnson.

(gentle music) ♪ I used to walk with my head ♪ ♪ Facing the ground ♪ ♪ Oh I was too scared ♪ ♪ To face all the frowns ♪ ♪ I slip on my clothes ♪ ♪ Tip toe up a tapa -apa -apa ♪ ♪ Ooh yeah but no one knows ♪ ♪ What I'm in store for ♪ ♪ Girl keep your head up ♪ ♪ Girl keep your head up ♪ ♪ Girl keep your head up ♪ ♪ I'll do it for me ♪ ♪ Girl keep your head up ♪ ♪ Girl keep your head up ♪ ♪ Girl keep your head up ♪ ♪ I'll do it for me ♪ ♪ I reach the edge of the yard ♪ ♪ The kids are so free ♪ ♪ Oh yeah I feel my heart start to fall ♪ ♪ Why do they bully me ♪ ♪ I see you turning around ♪ ♪ Are they lookin' at me ♪ ♪ Oh you won't back down no ♪ ♪ Standing like the tallest tree ♪ ♪ Head up ♪ ♪ All the way ♪ ♪ Do it for me yeah ♪ ♪ Girl keep your head up ♪ ♪ Oh keep your head up ♪ ♪ Do it for me ♪ ♪ In the deepest oceans ♪ ♪ The bottom of the sea ♪ ♪ Your eyes ♪ ♪ They turn me ♪ ♪ Whoa ♪ ♪ Why should I stay here ♪ ♪ Why should I stay ♪ ♪ 'Cause your eyes ♪ ♪ They turn me ♪ ♪ Oh ♪ ♪ Dah doy dah doy dah doy dah dah dah doy ♪ ♪ Girl, girl keep ♪ ♪ Girl keep, girl keep your ♪ ♪ Do it for me ♪ (air whooshing) - So we're back and we're gonna ask John Sloan, III about "Keep Your Head Up" by Kris Johnson.

What was that performance about?

- That song to me is just so fun.

And we just saw Kris Johnson, but also Lulu Fall and Sasha Kasperko who are amazing musicians.

And I actually think, 'cause she's gonna yell at me, I think Lulu also had a co-writing credit on that song.

So Kris Johnson and Lulu Fall.

If you don't know, Kris Johnson is a Detroiter, he was a Kresge fellow, an amazing jazz musician, and we all just saw and heard Lulu and Sasha as well.

But what's beautiful about that piece to me is that it just talks about like the everyday struggles that you might be dealing with and about how music can lift you out of that, about how life can get heavy sometimes.

But what we remember and the importance of the festival was really showing black art in all its forms.

And as we talked about earlier, the different touch points that theater can have.

And so presenting a piece like that, presenting music as theater was really important.

- If we were all gonna collect ourselves and there was one or two things you want the audience to take from the performance, what would it be?

- There's a reason I think that, I know my parents did this and I've seen a lot of other parents do this, I don't have any kids.

but when your child gets upset, they simply lift down and pick their head up, right?

Because let's, still have that pride in self.

Let's not allow any of these extra things in the world, to weigh down on us so much that we forget who we are.

And that I think is something that we all can learn from and benefit from, that this music points out very clearly.

And then hopefully, the festival as a project, in and of itself embodies.

- We're going back to the stage, I can't wait.

And what are we gonna see?

- So the next piece is actually a wonderful song by Douglas Lyons and Ethan Packchar called "Who I Am" featuring Mike Sandusky.

(air whooshing) (gentle piano music) ♪ Since I was a kid ♪ ♪ You always told me ♪ ♪ And whatever I did ♪ ♪ I could come to you ♪ ♪ So here I am with my heart open wide ♪ ♪ See now I am free ♪ ♪ It may upset you ♪ ♪ But I want you to see ♪ ♪ I'm finally proud of me ♪ ♪ I can stand on my own two feet without shame or fear ♪ ♪ Mama this is your son ♪ ♪ Your only one and I really need you to hold my hand ♪ ♪ Screw what they say ♪ ♪ Just throw it away ♪ ♪ I just wanna be happy in where I stand ♪ ♪ If I could change, I'd give it all for you ♪ ♪ But I can't ♪ ♪ This is who I am ♪ ♪ This is who I am ♪ ♪ You're in shock ♪ ♪ I get it, this is a lot to swallow ♪ ♪ But your not the only one who's hurting here ♪ ♪ Just want you to smile ♪ ♪ Be proud of me ♪ ♪ Like you always did ♪ ♪ With no apologies ♪ ♪ Does who I am make things so unclear ♪ ♪ Oh Mama this is your son ♪ ♪ Your only one and I really need you to hold my hand ♪ ♪ Screw what they say ♪ ♪ Just throw it away ♪ ♪ I just wanna be happy where I stand ♪ ♪ If I could change ♪ ♪ I'd give it all for you ♪ ♪ But I can't ♪ ♪ This is who I am ♪ ♪ This is who I am ♪ ♪ What you want me to hide ♪ ♪ Keep it all up inside to lie ♪ ♪ So that then everyone can call me a man ♪ ♪ But I don't give a damn ♪ ♪ Sorry I up the plan ♪ ♪ Do you care what they think ♪ ♪ Or who I really am ♪ ♪ Nothings changed Ma ♪ ♪ Will you choose the Bible over your only child ♪ ♪ I'm standing here ♪ ♪ I know it's not just a style ♪ ♪ With tears in your eyes ♪ ♪ Why are you in denial ♪ ♪ Mom please hold my hand ♪ ♪ Mama ♪ ♪ Oh Mama ♪ ♪ Mama this is your son ♪ ♪ Your only one ♪ ♪ And I really need you to hold my hand ♪ (air whooshing) - We're back with John Sloan and can you please tell us about that piece which was moving.

- Yeah.

- Touching and so relevant and needed for all of us?

- One of the things I love about that song and something I think you and I talked about earlier was the opportunity for us to really show diversity of the black experience.

And that song so spoke to me when I heard it and when I read it.

Not because I identify particularly with that artist's experience, because I think we've all had a similar experience of being able to say to somebody, "Wait a minute, this is exactly who I am as an individual.

"Why is that hard to accept?"

And wanting the love and the respect of someone that seems to be withholding that from you can be traumatizing.

But the way that Douglas Ethan wrote that piece, the way that Mike beautifully delivered that song, even down to the accompaniment, by Brian Buckner on piano, I think shows the power that music can have.

- There is an incredible satisfaction as an actor, as you know, to give a performance and the audience loves it.

- Yeah.

- But what is it to give a platform for others to get that appreciation from the audience.

- It's exhilarating.

I think pride doesn't really even begin to scratch the surface of what it feels like.

There's nothing more powerful, I think, than being able to say to somebody, "Your story is valid and your story is so valid.

"I have so much faith and belief in that story "that I'm gonna put as many resources as I can muster "behind your ability to tell that story.

"I'm not gonna censor it."

I'm not gonna speak at all to what that is 'cause that's not my experience- - And it's your mission, you said voices (chuckles) - Absolutely, absolutely, right.

And that impact, I think is almost immeasurable.

- [Satori] I thank you.

- [John] Oh thank you, Satori.

- I thank you for giving the platform.

I thank you for giving platform to black voices.

- I appreciate that.

It's imbued into our mission, right?

It's the reason that we exist.

And so to be able to continue to produce this work is really, really important and powerful.

I encourage everybody, if you're curious, if you're interested, go to obsidianfest.org and we're just really excited and happy to be able to be here and to be in the city.

- Go right after the show is over, okay.

Go to the website and check it out.

Thank you.

- Thank you.

(Satori laughs) (air whooshing) - Thank you for being with us on Detroit Performs Live from Marygrove.

We are so appreciative of Obsidian Theater for sharing their gifted artists with us.

That's it for tonight, but make sure to be here next time on Detroit Performs Live from Marygrove.

See you then.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Funding for Detroit Performs is provided by the Fred A. and Barbara M. Erb Family Foundation, The Kresge Foundation, The Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan, The A. Paul and Carol C. Schaap Foundation, The Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs, The National Endowment for the Arts, The DeRoy Testamentary Foundation, and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you, thank you.

(bright upbeat music) (gentle music)