- [Announcer] Coming up on "One Detroit," a 20 year vision for the Detroit Riverfront is now complete.
Plus, Detroit Public Theater opens its ninth season with a play that celebrates the resiliency of the human spirit.
Also ahead, a Michigan school raises awareness about teen dating violence.
Plus, a long-shuttered Detroit music venue is getting a massive makeover.
And we'll have suggestions on how to spend your weekend.
It's all coming up next on "One Detroit."
- [Narrator] From Delta faucets to Behr paint, Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.
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Support for this program is provided by the Cynthia and Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit Public TV.
- [Narrator] The DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit Public TV.
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(gentle upbeat music) - [Announcer] Just ahead on this week's "One Detroit," we'll take you behind the scenes of Detroit Public theater's new play, "Eight Nights."
Plus, students in a Macomb County school get a lesson on preventing teen dating violence.
Also coming up, a new life for a once famous jazz club in Detroit.
And Peter Whorf and Cecelia Sharpe of 90.9 WRCJ will help you with your Halloween weekend plans.
But first up, a major milestone for the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy.
The 3.5 mile East riverfront is now complete with the opening of the highly anticipated Detroit Riverfront Uniroyal Promenade.
- We are not just opening another section of the Riverwalk, but we are witnessing the completion of a bold vision that started with us in 2002, 2003.
But we are standing on the shoulders of a lot of folks that came before us that have visions for the Riverfront.
- Our original vision, three and a half miles of perpetual public access linked parks the entire way.
Something that would transform our community, something that would transform economic development in the entire area.
And we're really excited that we've been able to pull it together.
The entire city's gonna connect to the Riverfront and to Bellow, which is incredible.
- My generation, my father's generation growing up in Detroit, we didn't have a Riverfront.
Detroit's Riverfront belonged to factories and warehouses and cement silos.
And with the ribbon cutting today, it's an historic day because now the Detroit Riverfront truly belongs to the people of this city.
Thank you for everybody that made it possible.
(applause) - [Announcer] The conservancy raised more than $200 million over the past 20 years to transform the Detroit Riverfront into an award-winning site.
Let's turn now to Detroit Public Theater's new season.
The opening play, "Eight Nights" by Jennifer Masiel follows the life of a Holocaust survivor over eight decades during the eight nights of Hanukkah.
One Detroit's Chris Jordan spoke with members of the cast and production team about how the play not only addresses the Jewish experience, but also the oppression of many refugees and marginalized communities.
(gentle upbeat music) - Mama said.
She said we all had to be there for each other.
We had to stay together.
But I.
(person speaking foreign language) - Because it is the first night.
- I, I can't.
- You'll thank the Lord for having kept the two of you alive.
- "Eight Nights" by Jennifer Maisel follows a Holocaust survivor from the moment she arrives in New York in 1949 through to the year 2016, as she builds a very, very diverse community of friends and family.
The playwright is a woman named Jennifer Maisel, who I've collaborated with for almost 25 years.
In 2016, after the 2016 election, she was reading articles in the New York Times from the 1930s where there was all of this ugly, hateful speech about the Jewish problem.
And she was at the same time reading fairly ugly, horrifying hate speech in 2016 in our own country about the Muslim problem.
And when the Muslim ban went into effect in this country and there were Syrian refugees fleeing from Aleppo, she said that she knew she had to write something, and she knew that she was going to begin it with a Holocaust survivor and she was going to end it with a Syrian refugee.
And at the same time, what she told me was she had always wanted to write a Hanukkah play.
What she realized was she could tell eight nights of Hanukkah over eight decades to tell the story of displaced peoples who need refuge, and the promise and the hope of this country and the ways in which we must do better.
- Who is there?
- [Eric] Eric, it's me.
- Eric, just a minute.
Just a minute.
(indistinct) is my friend.
- It is all right.
It is our friend.
Those things don't happen here.
They won't happen here.
- Last February as we were sitting together as an artistic leadership team making decisions about the season was at kind of a high point of anti-Semitic violence and anti-Semitic hate speech in this country.
And we decided that it was extremely, extremely important to tell this story now.
In particular, it talks both about the uniqueness of the experience of Holocaust survivors, but also the universality of persecuted people.
And the experiences that Black Americans, Japanese Americans, LGBTQ Americans, and Muslim Americans face.
And we felt like this story not only would address the alarming rise in antisemitism that we were experiencing and are experiencing in this country, but it would also create bonds and unity that are there and should be there.
- Theater does that.
You're experiencing it together.
You're alive in the room together.
- The world, it moves for-- - Not always.
Not for us.
Not without struggle, and not in a straight line.
- Yes, but we marched with you, Aaron and I did.
We marched and the Civil Rights Act just signed.
Progress.
So much progress.
So forth, we'll not slip backwards.
- I would like to think that, sir, but that-- - But that can't be true.
- This play does a really great job about taking different cultures with very similar experiences and bringing them together.
And the kicker about that is we try our best to be empathetic to everyone and to everyone's experience.
But it's different when you actually experience it.
So there's this line of, we are in support of you, we are in alliance with you, we understand you.
And then the other side of it is, but you didn't go through it or it's not happening to you.
- Ty just turned 18.
It's become worse since he enlisted.
Benjamin is furious.
- I don't want him to see what I saw.
- But he won't.
- You don't know that, you don't know.
We didn't know what we were gonna see until we saw it.
- In the show, I think we are also exploring themes of trauma and how to deal with it.
Or if you deal with it at all or what happens if you don't.
There are things that you saw that will never leave you.
That is a reality of war.
And it's a reality of history.
- You didn't obliterate hate when you liberated the camps.
You couldn't, you were just men.
Just boys, really, both of you.
There was only so much you could do and you did everything you could.
- There have actually been quite a few children of Holocaust survivors who have visited and joined us in this storytelling and this experience.
And so many people in the audience have talked about feeling very seen as children of survivors watching the relationship between the daughter and the granddaughter and Rebecca, who is the survivor.
- My relationship with my mother, who knows what that would have been if we didn't go to Auschwitz, if we didn't go to Dachau, I might have been as spoiled and discontented and as normal as you.
- Mom.
- Theater communes us even closer and brings us as a community and also helps us see each other in a way that we don't get to see and hear and listen and communicate.
There just aren't that many spaces where we're with people who aren't like us honestly.
And theater allows us to come together with people who have really different lived experiences than ours.
- It really addresses the way all of our stories are connected and it really truly builds empathy.
It truly encourages people to look at someone else's story and say, "I see myself in that."
I think there's beautiful hope in it and beautiful healing in it.
- [Announcer] And you can see "Eight Nights" at the Detroit Public Theater through November 5th.
October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month.
And according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, dating violence affects millions of young people.
Beginning next year, a new state law will require Michigan schools to provide information on the issue to students.
"One Detroit" Senior Producer Bill Kubota shows how a school in Macomb County is educating teens on prevention and awareness.
(gentle upbeat music) - [Bill] It's Macomb, Dakota High School.
Ninth graders Learning about relationships.
- Today's presentation is called "Dating Secrets."
It is a presentation about teen dating violence.
Research shows us right now that as young as 12, that abusive relationships are starting to develop and occur.
So this early prevention education in schools is vital to hopefully stop that cycle and end the violence before it even really begins.
- [Bill] Turning Point, based in Mount Clemons, advocates for survivors of domestic violence, leading discussions in many Macomb County schools.
This session part of Dakota High's 20 week health class.
- Okay, quiz, how many high school students experience physical abuse from a dating partner each year in the United States?
Do we think it's 1,000, 15,000, 150,000, or 1.5 million?
It is 1.5 million high school students every year in this country.
- [Bill] A recent national survey found almost 10% of high schoolers reported suffering dating violence.
- That might even be more like controlling behavior, like abuse, right?
- [Bill] Other research shows that violence leaves lasting health impacts well into adulthood.
- Even though ninth graders, some of them are emotionally immature, you're just getting out of middle school, you're just really starting to experience life outside of your family system.
That doesn't mean that you don't have the capacity to start to learn about really important life issues.
So I hope that people don't take away like ninth grade's too young or they're not ready for this.
They are ready for it and they see it in TV shows and media.
They hear about it through their friendships and families.
It's an important time to start the education, but it also shouldn't be the end of it.
- Abuse can take many forms, but it is always about that power and control over another person.
And our definition of domestic violence applies to people who are in a romantic relationship.
They are involved in an intimate partnership.
So they might be dating or married, something like that.
- [Bill] Turning Point has been hosting these sessions for decades, but in more recent years, the onslaught of social media, a space where abusers exercise much of their power and control - Digital, that could be controlling your partner's social media accounts.
You could have a partner who asks to have the password to your accounts, the password to your phone.
It could be that someone wants to look through your Instagram DMs or your text messages to see what's going on in your life.
It takes a little bit to settle in.
This is a hard topic, it's uncomfortable.
These are things that not a lot of teens really want to originally talk about.
And then we meet them where they're at and have engaging conversations.
And part of this program is anonymous questions.
And we get a lot of anonymous questions about what do I do if I'm in a relationship like this?
How do I get help?
How do I help my friend?
- [Bill] A few seniors we talked to say this class has stayed with them since they took it back in ninth grade.
- It was kind of like, okay, well I need this class to graduate so I'm just gonna get it done and over with.
And then when Turning Point came in, it was like, oh wow, this is completely different from what I thought was going on in middle school.
- I've known people that have dated older people and have been in that type of relationship where they have a power dynamic because they're dating somebody that's older than them that will take advantage of them because they're young and naive.
- It really kind of sets their path throughout high school and life because they will come across relationships with different people, and not just like intimate relationships, but also relationships with friends.
- We know that many teens fear being punished by their parents for dating someone or for not breaking up with someone when their parents instruct them to.
Often teens might feel like their parents are trying to control them.
And if someone is already in a controlling relationship, adding that control from a parent can be really difficult and make a teen feel powerless.
But we also know that unless you tell your parents, they probably won't know.
In one study, while 82% of parents felt like they could identify all of the signs if their child was in a violent relationship, most parents could not correctly identify those signs.
- [Bill] A lesson here, confronting teen violence means tough conversations.
Young love can blind teens to what's really going on.
- Even like the littlest things like being like your partner is constantly asking you where you are with your friends, those are even signs of maybe an abusive relationship or things that might be a little wrong in your relationship, and it opened my eyes up a lot.
- There are many people still out there who don't really think they're in a toxic relationship or being domestically abused because they think that that's all they have.
- I think that it's important that we have this in ninth grade.
One thing that I wish we could do is have it introduced again at a later stage of high school.
And I know it's hard in public school.
There's so many requirements for students to graduate.
- Can I have your papers, please?
- To have it be a one and done in my opinion is kind of disappointing.
But I'd love to have some kind of a senior seminar where before students are launched into adulthood, that we had additional education on suicide prevention, violence prevention, and also drug prevention information to help launch them out into the world.
- [Announcer] A piece of Detroit's musical history is undergoing a massive restoration.
The Blue Bird Inn on the city's West Side was a popular jazz club from the 1930s to the 1950s.
Now, the long abandoned club is getting new life thanks to its new owners, the Detroit Sound Conservancy.
Contributor Cecelia Sharpe of 90.9 WRCJ was at the groundbreaking celebration.
(gentle upbeat music) (upbeat jazz music) - Right here with a Black owned and operated bar and hearth that nurtured bebop jazz.
Yep.
Indeed it did.
And no matter which way you cut it, Blue Bird Inn was magic.
Its significance to black history and culture is both sonic and social.
So we are here to commemorate starting this Blue Bird Inn rehabilitation work.
We preserve, we celebrate, and advocate for Detroit music and our incredible history.
And when we say we are actually Detroit Sound Conservancy, I include all of you, you are all part of the Conservancy because it's nothing but community putting its minds together to solve a problem.
- What has been the process of acquiring the Blue Bird Inn and just beginning the process of restoring the venue.
- We were able to purchase the Blue Bird.
And at that point we had just, we just fundraised to make sure it wasn't demolished on a demolition list.
And then we got historic designation for it so it could never be torn down in case our money came in slower than it was supposed to.
And now we are rejoicing and we are so happy that we have enough to open it in 2024.
- You're familiar with the Blue Bird Inn and the history of it.
What does it mean to you to have this renovation of the Blue Bird Inn right here in your community?
- It means a lot because people are moving back into the neighborhood and it's a good starting point to rejuvenate the area and maybe startup some other businesses right around the area that have been closed and moved out.
- I'm smelling the ribs, the chicken.
You got some good stuff going.
- Absolutely.
- You're here to feed the people, the volunteers and everyone that's here to celebrate the events.
- We have a meals program that we do.
The Detroit Sound Conservancy's been our partner for about six years.
And so my first barbecue here was in 2018 for Motor City Makeover, where we cleaned out the building.
And so we've established a pretty good rapport and a great partnership since.
- What are you looking forward to most about the Blue Bird Inn opening in the next 18 months?
- I think just having somewhere else to be able to go to for live music and a hangout spot.
I mean, we're here on Tigerman, not too far from Motown, not too far from Submerged and everything else that's going on here on the Boulevard.
So I think to be in this neighborhood and have another spot in the neighborhood that people are so familiar with, that's just an amazing thing.
So I can't wait till it opens.
- What does this day mean to you here at the Blue Bird Inn?
- This day is really a culmination, Cecelia, of just many years of love for this particular place.
I remember the first time I came here, I actually snuck out with a girlfriend of mine when I was about 15.
We were actually too young to drive, but we used to drive anyway.
- You were still driving?
- Yeah, so when our parents went to bed, I went over her house and she said, "We're gonna sneak out tonight.
Where should we go?"
I said "Let's go to this jazz club over here called the Blue Bird."
Over time I had a chance to actually work here when they did a reopening here in the 90s.
And then just to be able to have my youngest son be a drummer and to be here for another opening of this place, it's just everything comes full circle.
- Knowing that you'll be able to play in the same place that your mom snuck off to first and then was able to come back and play and perform as a bassist, how does that feel?
- It feels, it's really indescribable really when you think about it, knowing as well as my mother so many of my mentors have graced this stage as well, be it Roy Brooks, George Davidson, and my hero, Elvin Jones.
Being a part of this groundbreaking is immaculate to me.
(upbeat music) - How has the Detroit music community nurtured you as a musician?
- I think there's this spirit of mentorship that isn't talked about enough.
There's so many people that care about Detroit's history and legacy.
You have to bring up that next generation to be able to show them the importance of where music came from so that they understand where music is going.
- Being the next generation of jazz and continuing to carry the torch, what would you like to impart on the future of jazz?
- Wayne Shorter has a quote that really stuck with me when someone asked him what he thinks jazz is, and he said, "Jazz is like a bumblebee and it pollinates every other form of music and it tells them to stay creative, stay fresh, never stagnate."
And that's my greatest hope.
- I am happy that Detroit Sound is dedicated to learning and education because that piece of music is the part that translates to multiple generations.
So thank you and we look forward to bringing this project to you in this neighborhood and seeing you all again next year with when we will be doors open.
(upbeat jazz music) - [Announcer] Halloween is almost here, and there are plenty of spooky events taking place in metro Detroit over the weekend, along with a lot of fun activities.
Cecelia Sharpe and Peter Whorf from 90.9 WRCJ have the details in today's One Detroit Weekend.
- Hey Cecelia, great to be with you to talk about what's going on in Metro Detroit.
So what do you have for us today?
- Well, it's going to be a fright-filled weekend, but let's not forget about Dia de los Muertos.
There's a family friendly celebration going on Saturday, October 28th on the Detroit Riverfront with food, live music, shopping, dancing from ballet folklorico, and more.
- Sounds like a great time, but you're near the river and you wanna celebrate indoors, you can go to the Detroit Institute of Arts where you can learn about the tradition of sugar skulls while decorating one of your own.
- [Cecelia] Sugar skulls look so amazing and they can be so extravagant.
Another event happening Saturday is Arias and Overtures at the Detroit Opera featuring superstar singers including Christine Gerke and Keman Murra.
- [Peter] Also Saturday, hops lovers can enjoy the Detroit Fall Beer Festival taking place in Eastern Market.
It's one of the largest all-Michigan beer tastings around.
You'll also be delighted with live music and local Michigan food while drinking your suds.
- Ooh, speaking of suds, Peter, what's your favorite Michigan beer?
- Hmm.
Maybe too many to name.
- Well, you know, there are a lot of great Michigan beers to choose from.
And there's something new happening at the Henry Ford Museum honoring Nelson Mandela.
It's "Mandela: The Official Exhibition."
It will run through January 15th, so make time to stop by and see all he did throughout his life for humanity.
- Plus, there's so many other fun things going on, including those frightful events we were talking about.
So let's see some more.
Have a great weekend.
(gentle upbeat music) - [Announcer] That'll do it for this week's "One Detroit."
Thanks for watching.
Head to the "One Detroit" website for all the stories we're working on.
Follow us on social media and sign up for our weekly newsletter.
- [Narrator] From Delta Faucets to Behr paint, Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.
Masco, serving Michigan communities since 1929.
Support for this program is provided by the Cynthia and Edsel Ford Fund for journalism at Detroit Public TV.
- [Narrator] The DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit Public TV.
Among the state's largest foundations committed to Michigan-focused giving.
We support organizations that are doing exceptional work in our state.
Visit dtefoundation.com to learn more.
- [Narrator] Nissan Foundation and viewers like you.
(gentle upbeat music) (bright fanfare)