Award-winning playwright Dominique Morisseau is the author of a three-play cycle about Detroit. One of those plays, Paradise Blue, opens at the Signature Theater this week. In this wide-ranging conversation, we talk about violence against women, Black feminism, the destruction of the Black Power movement, the importance of earned rage, the power of that rage when directed outward and the pain when it gets twisted and directed against those closest to us.
Dominique shares her influences with us, from Pearl Cleage to Tupac to her revolutionary family — and more. Music is an important source of inspiration for her, and we’ve included some of the music that appears in her plays. We also discuss her work as a social justice activist and her fight to expand both representation in and access to the theater.
In the opener, Jen, Danny and Eric discuss Trump’s “welfare reform 2.0” plan and what it tells us about how race, poverty and class are talked about in this country.
There’s so much we got into in this episode. If you want to follow any of the threads further, check out our Patreon page (http://Patreon.com/BetterOffRedPod) with links to articles and music (access is free to all regardless of whether you are a patron).
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