Rosedale Park Players

Tiana Kennell

A 53-year-old theatrical company tucked away in a tidy neighborhood on Detroit’s west side is doing its part to eliminate society’s focus on race.
The Park Players of North Rosedale Park, a local neighborhood theater group, takes a colorblind approach to casting when auditioning actors for roles in their shows. A colorblind cast means that actors of any race are cast as characters of any race.
Case in point: Among a bevy of village maidens in the group’s March production of Disney’s Beauty & the Beast, one was Eastern Indian, one was White and one was Black.
“We’re a mixed racial neighborhood and group and it just gives us a great deal more flexibility and reflects where Detroit should be and what Detroit should be doing,” says Roger Loeb, a member of the Board of Directors for The Park Players.
The group consists of metro Detroit residents from diverse ethnical backgrounds, economic classes and ages. But together they all have the same purpose, which is to create unforgettable experiences through comedies, dramas and Broadway musicals. Loeb says that this unified effort didn’t always exist in North Rosedale Park, which stretches east of the Southfield Freeway to Greenfield Road.
“Historically it was a white dominated group that struggled to attract African Americans, and happily we’ve made considerable progress in the past five to 10 years,” says Loeb, a member of the theater and a resident of the neighborhood for more than 27 years.
Robert Closson, the official North Rosedale Park historian, and his wife Marcia joined the theater in 1977. At the time, Closson says the theater, which officially opened in 1954, enforced a strict rule permitting only resident involvement. He says the original goal of The Park Players was “To bring good theater to North Rosedale Park.” But that policy changed as time passed and northwest Detroit became more integrated. The currecnt objective of the oldest surviving community theater in Detroit is “To bring good theater to anybody who wants to see it.”
“We are no longer defined as a neighborhood,” says Closson.
However, he admits, the Rosedale Park Players have helped enrich the community. The quiet, middle-income enclave of brick, ranch and Tudor style homes is the only residential area in the city that can boast of a spacious, professional quality theater—right in the heart of the city.
Wyandotte’s native, Carly Matkovich, 22, has worked with several other theater groups, but she describes the Rosedale Park Players as “one of the best groups I’ve been in.
“I don’t care if I have to drive 45 minutes to get here,” says Matkovich, who was cast in the fall production of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie as Sandy, a student at a Scottish school in the 1930’s.
She says the members make the group special.
“People come from all over southeastern Michigan… all ages and races. Everyone has a story to tell and they’re genuinely nice people,” she says.
The characters in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie were written as Caucasian but the cast members were multiracial. The young students in the play were actors ranging from preteen to mid-20s.
“We have to ask our audience to suspend disbelief-- and that’s what theater is,” says Loeb, who directed the play. “None of this is happening and the audience knows that. But our audience has learned a lot because of the kinds of things we have asked of them in the past.”
He says in prior shows, there have been many mixed racial families and couples. However, colorblind casting does not always fit the script.
“We did To Kill a Mockingbird, and it’s very specific. It’s in the South in a certain era, and it has a pro-racial theme. Certain characters have to be African American and certain characters can not be African American,” Loeb says. “Other than that there is no reason not to do colorblind casting.”
Upcoming auditions for “Smokey Joe’s Café” will be held in December. The play will open to the public on February 29, 2008. For more information, call (313) 835-1103.
African American Family Magazine November 2007