Mellon Foundation Awards $500k For Detroit-Focused Propulsion Theatre Project

Mellon Foundation has awarded five hundred thousand dollars to Blackboard Plays Founder, Garlia Cornelia Jones, and Obsidian Theater Festival Producing Artistic Director John Sloan III in support of the Propulsion Theatre Project (PTP), a partnership project dedicated to creating work that amplifies the ecosystem of theater in Detroit. This new endeavor will partner with for-profit, non-profit, and municipal entities in Detroit, Michigan to propel cultural exchange, workforce development, artistic creativity, and economic empowerment through the theatrical arts.

Detroit Natives Garlia Cornelia Jones and John Sloan III have over two decades of experience creating and producing work for Black and underserved populations through their organizations. 

Jones’ Blackboard Plays began as Blackboard Reading Series and was founded in 2008 with a mission to support Black playwrights across the African Diaspora. The goal: readings and 20 minutes of feedback for the writer during their developmental process. Its original home was at Nancy Manocherian’s the cell in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood. It went on to have a regular home in the Mary Rodger’s Room at The Dramatists Guild before the pandemic shifted everything online. Since its inception, Blackboard has given first readings to Jocelyn Bioh’s School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play and Jordan E. Cooper’s Tony-nominated Ain’t No Mo’, to name a few. During the summer of 2020, the Black Motherhood and Parenting New Play Festival (BMPFest) was born as a partnership between the Parent Artist Advocacy League (PAAL) and Blackboard Plays. BMPFest is a national and digital festival uplifting the stories of Black families by Black parents and caregivers.  

The grandson and namesake of a Purple Heart Tuskegee Airman, Sloan grew up with a profound understanding of the value of social activism and political engagement. He studied Musical Theatre Performance at The University of Michigan, later joining the company of Disney’s The Lion King first national tour in 2007. It was while performing across North America that Sloan began producing benefit cabarets and concerts for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids (BC/EFA). In 2011, Sloan founded The Helping Hands Campaign for the Arts (HHC) as an initiative dedicated to uniting artists with the community through acts of service, fundraising, and volunteerism. Working with professional touring artists from Broadway tours like Disney's The Lion King, Wicked, Billy Elliot, and Jersey Boys, the HHC organized outreach events nationwide. Sloan moved back to Detroit in 2017, serving as Co-Lead organizer for the Detroit chapter of Black Lives Matter, and continuing to intertwine his love of the arts with a focus on social equity. This intersection led to the creation of The Obsidian Theatre Festival in the 2020-21 season. Later that year, Helping Hands relaunched as The GhostLight Arts Initiative, the social enterprise arm of GhostLight Creative Productions (a production company Sloan founded in 2008) and the producing arm responsible for The Obsidian Theater Festival. 

Since 2019, Jones and Sloan have been involved in work created by the other, and much of that work has increased opportunities for Detroit artists. Both have longstanding arts and culture roots of engagement in the city of Detroit. Sloan was a director in the inaugural “48Hours in…™Detroit”, brought to Detroit as part of the OBIE Award winning Harlem9 and “48Hours in…™Harlem” of which Jones is a founding member, in collaboration with Detroit Public Theatre in 2019, and later in 2022. This made possible in part by a Knight Arts Challenge Grant. In 2021, Sloan was hired by Wayne State University as the Editor of Jones’ virtual production of her play, “Pingree’s Past”, Directed by Kresge Fellow, Gary Anderson of Plowshares Theatre Company. Jones was an Artist-in-Residence at the time at Wayne State in the Department of Theatre and Dance, where she is now an adjunct. Except for a collaboration with the 24-hour viral musicals during the spring/summer of 2021, the focus on Detroit continued, when Jones asked Sloan to come on board her/the inaugural BMPFest as a producer and film editor, and Sloan asked Jones to join the team for the Obsidian Theatre Festival as the Creative Producer. Jones is currently one of the Associate Artistic Directors and the Senior Creative Producer for the Obsidian Theatre Festival. Sloan is currently the Director of Film Production and Senior Producer for the Black Motherhood and Parenting New Play Festival. Sloan and his production company, Ghostlight Creative Productions were the production team behind Public Square 2.0, the re-launch of the podcast at The Public that Jones hosted when she was the Director, Innovation and New Media until August 2023.

From their experience with these projects, both Jones and Sloan recognized the ripples of systemic inequity in their hometown. PTP is focused on contributing to the growing effort addressing these issues, including the development of local infrastructure through coalition building, the increase of wages for theatre professionals, training and professional development opportunities for local theatre practitioners, and more.

Garlia Cornelia Jones’ contribution to PTP continues a long-standing family legacy of Detroit theatremakers. Her father, Dr. James Allen Jones, was connected to Woodie King, Jr, founder of New York’s New Federal Theatre, in Detroit during the 1960s. During that time, he also founded the internationally-touring, Detroit-based Restoration Arts Theater. Garlia graduated high school knowing that the theatre community she needed back home did not fully exist. She went on to attend Indiana University for a BA, in Theatre & Drama and English. During her undergraduate, Jones founded Black Curtain, a Black theatre organization, because of the lack of opportunities for Black students and Black stories on the university stage. She worked on an MA in African American and African Diaspora Studies before moving to New York, to attend The New School for Drama, where she graduated with an MFA in Playwrighting in 2010. But she knew she wanted to come home to Detroit one day to build that community, and since 2017 has been focused on doing just that.

“Coalition building is not easy,” acknowledges Jones, “It requires patience, interaction with municipal bodies, and solid relationships or the building blocks and desire to embark on a journey together, even if your process differs from that of your collaborator. By intentionally fostering an internal culture of non-judgemental openness and marrying that energy with a philosophy of kindness-in-accountability, we work hard to preemptively combat the chronic fatigue typical of this industry’s ‘the show must go on’ mentality and generate powerful partnerships for Detroit as a city held back not by a lack of talent, but by a lack of opportunity.”

“Success isn’t easy, and it’s never instant.” says Sloan. “It requires both the incredible confidence of unwavering commitment, and a deep humility in acknowledgement of our place in a long history of artists. But the work must always come first. Not just because it’s what we love to do, but because we do not have a choice in the doing. It is our obligation as Black artists and Detroiters to ensure that others have access to the type of equity only possible through unfiltered self-expression. That’s the work, and the work always comes first.” 

Included in Year 1 programming of PTP is the launch of The Propulsion Theatre Project Symposium. The annual symposium, housed within GLAI’s First Annual Detroit IMPACT Arts Conference in June, will offer important foundational access to resources. This event will bring together actors, technicians, directors, designers, and producers from across the city as an initial and foundational step towards an ultimate goal of strengthening the professional theatre ecosystem. Participants will be given the opportunity to engage with each other, while simultaneously considering the broad needs of the community. Panelists for the inaugural Propulsion symposium will include arts professionals from around the country who can speak on parenting in the arts, directing, and advocacy.

In considering the concept of sustainability, PTP also considers for and by whom the work is being created. By looking ahead to partnerships that can offer training in social equity framed through a lens of artistic engagement, PTP will continue to create and foster space for theatre professionals to consider how their work impacts the people around them and interacts with endemic social constructs.   

This is the first time Blackboard Plays has received funding from the Mellon Foundation. The Ghostlight Arts Initiative was a recipient of an officer's grant in 2022 for the second annual Obsidian Theatre Festival in Detroit Michigan.

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