In Paradise Blue, a drama by Dominique Morisseau recently staged at Penumbra Theatre, there is a telling moment that demonstrates what theater can do for all participants, performers, and audiences. The play features several characters connected to Paradise, a jazz club located in Detroit’s Black Bottom neighborhood in 1949. It opens with Pumpkin, who helps run the club with her romantic partner, Blue, reading poetry to herself and rehearsing the lines with irrepressible delight as she sweeps the floor. When the pianist, Corn, and drummer, P-Sam, arrive, she asks one of them to hold her book while she recites a poem about “the heart of a woman.” She begins then halts as she forgets a line, but Corn provides a word as a hint and she enthusiastically orates the rest of the lyric.

Thereafter, P-Sam looks at her with admiration, and Corn emphatically states, “That was goooood.” This affirmation fills Pumpkin with such elation and pride that she seems to flower into her better self. This is how theater can knit a community together — providing a stage and occasion for its members to shine, and recognize the light in themselves, and have this brilliance celebrated.

The director of Paradise Blue, Lou Bellamy, argues that theater can’t help but constitute a community, can’t help but bring its members together, a result of practical matters: “Just the form of theater forces you to build community. The first thing you have to do is get a space. That means you’ve got to talk to someone with money who’s got a space, and you need to procure that space. Then you need to get information out, so you’ve got to go through the newspaper; you’ve got to hook up with the radio; you’ve got to have nonprofit status; you’ve got to start writing grants; you’ve got to get a board of directors. All this stuff builds community and holds people together.”

Read the full article about Penumbra Theatre by Seph Rodney at Hyperallergic.