The fall and rise of Theatre Charlotte
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With ‘Detroit ’67,’ Theatre Charlotte continues its rise in what has been a battered community theater landscape
An entrepreneur (Graham Williams) finally gets the woman he loves (Shanitra Lockett) to acknowledge his affection in “Detroit ‘67.” (Photo by Kyle J. Britt/courtesy of Theatre Charlotte)
by Lawrence Toppman
The first helpful stroke of fate, though no one realized it at the time, was the fire. The second was the passing of Actor’s Theatre of Charlotte, the city’s only fully professional theater company for adults. From the ashes of its burned building, while the city still mourned ATC, Theatre Charlotte has risen like a phoenix and spread its wings over the local dramatic landscape.
The evidence, on view through June 11 in its ancient but refurbished home at 501 Queens Road, is “Detroit ’67.” Dominique Morisseau’s tough-minded play drops us into the racial divide in what was then America’s fifth-largest city, where hope for unity sprang up during the Civil Rights Era and then dwindled over six decades.
Ron McClelland directed this high-quality production, fired by incendiary performances by Shanitra Lockett and Devin Clark as siblings whose views differ widely. She wants to hunker down in modest, lower middle-class safety; he wants to start a business, in this case a bar, so he’ll no longer be dependent on the caprices of white employers. When he rescues a white woman he finds staggering down the street after a beating, complications inevitably follow.
Deep roots, quiet expansion: Theatre Charlotte, which had its first full season as Little Theatre of Charlotte in 1931, remains a community theater. It has a small paid staff but relies on volunteer actors, crew members and ushers to put on seven shows a season. “A Christmas Carol” reliably helps to bankroll the other six, which generally include two musicals, one mystery and three comedies or dramas.
The company has no plans to pick up the mantle of Actor’s Theatre of Charlotte, which closed last fall after 33 years in various locations. (That collapse left Children’s Theatre of Charlotte as the only fully professional theater company in Mecklenburg County.)
Instead, Theatre Charlotte has quietly expanded its presence in the community physically — “Picasso at the Lapin Agile,” its last show, ran at the Mint Museum Uptown and Divine Barrel Brewing in NoDa — and dramatically, with works like “Detroit ’67” and Lauren Gunderson’s “I and You.” That comedy-drama, which will run June 16-25, won the 2014 award for best new play from the American Theatre Critics Association.
A rebuilt facility: Eighteen months ago, patrons might have wondered whether the group could even stay alive. A fire on Dec. 28, 2021, damaged the seats, flooring and ceiling and ruined most of the lighting and sound equipment. Theatre Charlotte set out to raise $100,000 for repairs, optimistically quoting the Black Knight from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” on its outdoor sign: “Tis but a scratch.”
The company took shows on the road while rebuilding its facility and, as artistic director and acting executive director Chris Timmons forecast, returned to Queens Road in autumn 2022.
A sign painted on the wall near the box office reads “Welcome home.” Playgoers who haven’t been there since the Covid pandemic will get a surprise: The main auditorium seems more spacious and comfortable than ever, due to new seats and a high ceiling that reveals the wooden roof and crossbeams.
Local theater companies have had long-term rental agreements with landlords of varying benevolence, but only Theatre Charlotte actually owns its building. The recent closing of Spirit Square squeezed smaller groups such as Three Bone Theatre and Charlotte’s Off-Broadway into cramped “black-box” spaces, whether the Arts Factory at West End Studios or the Visual and Performing Arts Center. Theatre Charlotte, meanwhile, seats 220 people in front of a full proscenium stage.
That kind of distance helps a traditional show such as “Detroit ’67,” where we wouldn’t want to be right on top of the actors. (A few Charlotteans saw this play in 2019, when Three Bone and UNC Charlotte wrestled for the rights; the university won, and Three Bone did Morisseau’s “Pipeline.”)
We need to be able to take in the complexities of Timmons’ set, where pictures of Joe Louis and Malcolm X share space with a lurid black velvet painting of a Nubian sexpot and a red, black and green Pan-African flag. These siblings are complicated people navigating cautiously through a new and troubling world, and we must take the time to understand them.
The definition of “professionalism” in the arts traditionally depends on whether the cast and crew are paid, ideally a reasonable living wage. That’s the philosophy at Children’s Theatre; it was the goal, though ultimately an unachievable one, at Actor’s Theatre.
Yet professionalism can also be a mindset: painstaking attention to detail, a thorough understanding of difficult material, a willingness to take risks with works that may not please complacent audiences. On that score, Theatre Charlotte’s “Detroit ’67” makes the grade.
Lawrence Toppman covered the arts for 40 years at The Charlotte Observer before retiring in 2020.
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