Since our founding, Detroit Public Theatre has partnered with the Detroit Public Schools Community District (DPSCD) to give high school students access to works of art that connect with their high school social studies and literature curricula, and bring academic lessons to life. Each year, we engage approximately 2,000 students from five DPSCD schools with three productions. Students work with DPT teaching artists on pre-show lessons in the classroom, then come to the theatre for dedicated student matinees and post-show dialogues with artists and community members. 

In the 11 year history of the program, the vast majority of students have shared through surveys that the program has helped them better understand what they are learning in the classroom, and that they would like to be more involved in their communities. They further have shared that this program inspired them and connected them more to history. As one Renaissance High School student once shared with us, “Actually being able to have a front row seat as to what it is that people were experiencing in the homes that we live in and the streets that we walk on and watching it in the form of a play was much more interactive. It was much more influential. It was moving.” Another said that DPT’s education programming “helped me understand what we are learning in school in a whole new way.”

Detroit Public Theatre is the only theatre in our region working intentionally with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals through our Shakespeare in Prison (SIP) program. The program uses theatre and the process of analyzing, rehearsing and putting on a play as a catalyst for empowerment, hope, and healing. SIP ensemble members describe this program as being vital to their growth and health in prison—to the cultivation of hope for the present and future, their belief in their own capabilities, and empathy for themselves and others.

SIP has worked with more than 350 direct participants and approximately 2,000 incarcerated audience members at two adult prisons and three youth facilities. SIP currently works with an ensemble of women incarcerated at Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility, as well as working with alumni of the program who have been released from prison through our Shakespeare Reclaimed post-release program. For three summers, the Shakespeare Reclaimed program has created powerful performances and brought urgent stories of the experience of incarceration and re-entry to audiences at Detroit Public Theatre. These performances have sparked dialogue and inspired in audiences both empathy and advocacy. The transformative work of SIP and Shakespeare Reclaimed provides program participants and audiences with avenues for both community and advocacy.

Understanding that socioeconomic factors pose one of the biggest barriers to entry for many who have been historically excluded from theatre, Detroit Public Theatre offers multiple accessible ticketing initiatives. DPT offers pick-your-price (PYP) tickets for nearly every performance of the season, ranging from $5 to beyond the regular ticket price of $52. In our most recently completed season, we sold nearly 1,400 pick-your-price tickets, over 65% of which were purchased at the $5 level—a more than 90% discount off the full ticket price. DPT offers heavily discounted tickets for students and for community members impacted by the carceral system, and $30 tickets to all Thursday evening performances. DPT’s box office also provides accessibility aids, such as wheelchairs and assisted listening devices that connect our sound system to headphones and/or patron hearing aids.

Our Detroit Dialogues program is a series of facilitated post-show discussions which give our audiences the opportunity to explore the themes and questions of our plays in meaningful dialogue with artists, educators, and community leaders. This program is designed to deepen the access our audience has to the subject matter of our plays, and to build space to connect with panelists who hold significant lived experience or expertise. In our past three seasons we have engaged well over 5,000 audience members over more than  100 post-show dialogues around topics as diverse as The Harlem Renaissance, Black and Jewish community connectivity, the history of the Tuskegee Airmen, Japanese-American incarceration camps, the impact of gun violence on families and communities, the individual and societal impacts of incarceration and successful re-entry, and so much more. American Theatre magazine featured DPT’s dialogue series in January of 2023, saying of our work, “These post-play conversations were not performative or perfunctory. Real people responded truthfully to a story they witnessed together. If we are able to have such frank and open conversations in a theatre in Michigan, a swing state, what more might we be capable of?”

In 2022, DPT piloted our Third Avenue Garage (TAG) Residency Program, which was designed to address a severe shortage of affordable performance space for artists and small and mid-sized arts organizations in Detroit. The program provides free and heavily subsidized performance space to itinerant, innovative Detroit arts organizations and artists—many of whom have been historically displaced and under-resourced. Projects by resident artists and space grant recipients have included: a monologue project by Sofa Stories, designed to uplift the voices of LGBTQ homeless youth; a rap monologue battle as part of the BRED Hip-Hop Theatre Festival; a poetry slam series hosted by Joel Fluent Greene; a performance of an original play by the Dropped Keys Theatre Company in partnership with the University of Michigan’s Prison Creative Arts Project; a mayoral debate hosted by Teen HYPE; the Detroit Writing Room Awards; a women’s concert with Motor City Sings; and a workshop production of Andrea Assaf’s new play DRONE in partnership with the Arab American National Museum. Additional projects include play readings and workshops, a fashion show, an art installation, and a book launch.