The Extra Mile Playwrights Theatre is a group of Detroit-area playwrights, actors, directors and producers dedicated to showcasing local theatre. The mission of EMPT is to build community by creating and developing transformative stories through the written word, storytelling and performance.

Extra Mile Playwrights Theatre

Upcoming Events

Join Extra Mile Playwrights Theatre for the return of Rush Hour Reads!Wednesday, April 23, 2025
6-8 pm
Live6 Alliance located at 7426 W. McNichols Detroit, MI 48221
We look forward to entertaining you!
Cost: Free!Future 2025 Rush Hour Read Dates:
June 25
July 23
August 27

Members

Ann Eskridge's passion for African American history explores, through fiction, playwriting and screenwriting, subjects like the Underground Railroad, and all-black towns in Oklahoma. Her stories are fact woven into fiction. She was a broadcast journalist before becoming a freelance writer and teacher. She dabbled in politics, working for a Republican Lt. Governor and a Democratic Detroit Council President. She developed the Mass Media Program at a Detroit school, and was a speechwriter for a utility. Through career twists and turns, she wrote. She writes historical fiction as her homage to the ancestors and is currently enjoying writing lyrics for her musicals.

Pat Jones a.k.a. P.J. Edghill started telling stories at a young age. As an adult with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theatre from Wayne State University, that ability spread to many mediums giving her a multimedia career that includes theatre, television, fiction & marketing as she learned how to tell the stories of people & brands. Within her career she has produced TV shows that have appeared on IFC, Spike TV, LOGO & Oxygen. She has worked with several Fortune 500 companies including McDonalds, General Motors, Sprint/Nextel & Reebok. She has had plays produced in New York and made her Off Off Broadway directorial debut directing Bonfire Night, by Joan Baker. In 2019, she was chosen as a director to participate in the inaugural year of 48 Hours In™ Detroit, a 48-hour play festival that was a collaboration between Obie Award winning producers Harlem 9 & the Detroit Public Theatre. She turned her unpublished novel, Ovid’s Flea, into an eight-episode fiction podcast. She is currently working on a few screenplays, and hoping to have her comedy farce, Team Plarski produced in the near future. You can find out more about her at www.pjproducer.com.

Andrew Morton (he/him) is a Queer British immigrant, playwright, and theatre-maker. He lives in Detroit, where he works as a teaching artist and arts consultant with various arts and social service organizations and is the founding producing artistic collaborator at Every Soul Arts, which provides creative arts opportunities for young people experiencing homelessness. As an artist and educator, Morton was recognized by Kresge Arts in Detroit as a 2020 Kresge Artist Fellow, and in 2021, he received a Kennedy Center Gold Medallion for services to theatre education. In 2024, he was named one of six Detroit theatre workers you should know by American Theatre Magazine. Morton’s plays have been produced across the US and internationally in the UK, Australia, and Canada. His award-winning play Bloom, inspired by urban gardeners in Flint, Michigan, is available through Dramatic Publishing, Inc.

Maureen Paraventi writes plays, novels, nonfiction and songs. When she’s not writing, she acts in local theatrical productions, sings in a pop/rock/Irish band (McLaughlinsAlley.com) and spends way too much time on Facebook. Maureen’s full-length and one act plays have been produced in Michigan, Florida and New York.

Gail Parrish is an award-winning playwright whose works have been staged nationally, internationally and on television. Her plays include Leavings, Bringing Back Josephine, Elevator, Blood Red Summer and more. Some of her awards include the Kresge Artist Fellowship, Polarity Ensemble Theater's Dionysus Festival award, Eugene O'Neill Playwright's Conference semi-finalist, winner of Daimler-Chrysler's National Playwright's Competition and an Emmy nomination from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (Midwest). She is a proud member of Extra Mile Playwrights Theatre and lives in Detroit.

Krystle Dellihue is an actor and playwright from Detroit, dedicated to bringing historical Black narratives to life on stage. Her works include White Coat, Match Point, Dreams and Nightmares, and Hattie: A Seat at the Table, which was named the 2022 Audience Favorite at Houston's Fade To Black Festival. Through her storytelling, Krystle strives to honor the resilience, struggles, and triumphs of Black history, creating compelling and thought-provoking theatrical experiences. She is grateful to the EMPT for welcoming her into the community.

Forest Hudson was introduced to playwriting by attending the Black and Brown Theatre's Storyteller's Workshop, that led to his short play, This Island Now, which was performed by Black and Brown Theatre's Storyteller’s Series. His short play, Community Affairs, was performed via Black and Brown Theatre’s Our Voices Series, and by the Extra Mile Playwrights Theatre’s Detroit 2020 Series. His short play, Untitled, was recently performed by Open Book Theatre Company’s,Breaking Laws to Gain Freedom: Liberating Stories from Detroit. Forest also is a very passionate actor who just enjoys the craft and the entire process of theatre. He also wants to give a big shout-out to his EMPT family and everyone who supports him in his endeavors.

Johnice Littlejohn is an actor, writer, physician, native Detroiter and proud member of the Extra Mile Playwrights Theatre. She graduated from the University of Detroit Mercy in 2011, earning her B.S. in Biology with a minor in Theatre and Michigan State University with her Masters in Public Health in 2014 and Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine degree in 2022. Some of her theatre credits include Old Woman/Neighbor in Voices from the Neighborhood, Mug in The Empire Builders, Miss Pat in The Vagina Monologues and Lisette in Unheard Voices. She also made her writing debut in the Voices from the Neighborhood project in writing A Detroit Scene. Johnice considers her love for both medicine and theatre as a way to continuously use both sides of her brain.

Julianna Gonzalez is a playwright and stage manager with a bachelor's in Drama from Vassar College. Originally from Paterson, New Jersey, she has lived in several different cities around the country before settling in Detroit, where she is thrilled to be part of the theater scene by way of EMPT, Shakespeare Royal Oak, Black and Brown Theatre, and Matrix Theater. In her opinion, Detroit is full of the most talented, collaborative, diverse, and community-oriented artists she has ever had the honor to work with.

Shawntai Brown is a native Detroit playwright, poet, artistic coordinator, teaching artist and 2020 Detroit Kresge Live Arts Fellow. She has a Bachelor of Arts in creative writing from Western Michigan University and a Master of Arts in Literacy Learning from Marygrove College. You can find her poetry in Wayne Literary Review, Kaleidoscope, Cactus Heart, and Synaesthesia Magazine, among others. She has birthed more than two dozen one-act and full-length plays centering queer identity and black community in the genres of comedy, drama and documentary theatre. Currently, she is the School Programs Manager with InsideOut Literary Arts and serves on the board with Extra Mile Playwrights Theatre where she is also a contributing writer to devised works. She is co-creator of Black LGBT Plays and co-host of Woman Crush Everyday, a web show dedicated to reviewing television, plays and movies centering Black women-loving-women characters. Right now, Shawntai is somewhere laughing, cuddling her dog and wife, crafting a scene, or cracking a joke. Learn more about her at sbscribes.com.

Kathie Eyah House is a Detroit native who spends most of her time writing poetry and plays. She is pleased to be making her debut as a new playwright with the Extra Mile Playwright Theatre with the production of her play, Love Not Paper. Her work includes a student performance of her play, Randy’s Kitchen Cabinet with the New Federal Theatre in New York. She has recited poems at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History and at local poetry slams while also serving as a poetry slam judge. She looks forward to continuing to build her portfolio within the theatre area.

Lynch R. Travis is a member of AEA and SAG/AFTRA and has received theater
awards from the Ann Arbor News, Detroit News, Detroit Free Press, Oakland Press,
EncoreMichigan, Lansing City Pulse and the Detroit Theatre Examiner for his work
as an actor and director. He has also won Subscriber Awards at Performance
Network and Detroit Repertory Theaters.
Lynch is a Resident Artist at the Purple Rose Theatre, where he leads their
diversity, equity and inclusion outreach work. He also serves as Workshop Director
for the Detroit Repertory Theater, and is a member of the University of Michigan
CRLT Applied Theatre Company.
He has taught Acting and Theater for Ann Arbor Public Schools, Michigan Actors
Studio, Mosaic Youth of Detroit, Shakespeare in Detroit, the Vista Maria Residential
Program for Girls and guest lectured at Wayne State University and Oakland
University.

Contact

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History

Founded by playwrights Ian Drife, Kristine Biadaszkiewicz, Steve Schultz, Ann Eskridge and Edward J. Thomats in June 2009, The Extra Mile is a group of Detroit-area playwrights, actors, directors & producers dedicated to showcasing local theatre.  The six founding playwrights held script-reads of their pieces and later presented them to the public at AJ’s Coffeehouse in Ferndale, Michigan.The make-up of the group  continuously evolves which means we've created in many different genres and been fortunate to work with some incredible artists. At the 2010 Nöel Night in the George N’namdi Gallery, we presented short pieces about an art gallery. In 2011 we created the Raw Festival, a three-day festival of short plays at the now-defunct Park Bar in downtown Detroit, In 2012, we held a Children’s and Youth Festival at the Ferndale Library.In 2013, we followed up with creating dramatic scenes from oral histories for the University Commons area, six square miles from 8 mile to the Lodge and Wyoming to Woodward.
The University of Detroit Mercy's (UDM) Collaborative Design Center (DCDC)  then awarded a grant to develop “pop up” ideas for the Livernois business district - the Avenue of Fashion. We partnered with them and received a grant from the Michigan Humanities Council to present three separate performances of Voices from the Neighborhood.  This led to a full performance at The Detroit Design Festival's Light Up Livernois event.Our 2014 and 2015 we began holding Community Nights, when we invite audience members to be actors and do a cold read of a new 10 minute script set to a theme. Community nights are a great way for us to connect with the community as well as meet new playwrights as we open up two spots for non EMPT members.   Community nights have been held at a few different venues around the University District including Detroit's Good Cakes and Bakes coffee shop and bakery as well as Detroit Sip.  Like every Extra Mile event, the audience is given the opportunity for a talk back session, where playwrights gain insight and reactions to their work. We continue to do Community nights least once a year.A Detroit Carol, a one-act play following the tradition of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, was presented as a full-production as a guerrilla theater piece at Detroit's 2016 Light Up Livernois, where two vacant store fronts were transformed into the Cathartic Cacophony of Compassion, bringing community members into a heartfelt discussion about their wishes for their neighborhoods as Detroit's revitalization highlights new challenges and opportunities.'67 Rebellion: A Memory Play, was the combined work of EMPT writers, with an EMPT member directing and EMPT member actors and guest actors. It was based on oral histories collected by The Detroit Historical Society, and personal interviews and perspectives. ’67 Rebellion: A Memory Play had its first reading at Detroit Sip in July 2017 which gave the public a chance to respond to the readings.  The play then had a staged reading at the Southfield Unitarian Universalist Church to a standing room only audience where lively tap back ensued, in November of that year.We wouldn't be Detroiters if we didn't mark the legacy of ArethaFranklin.  2018 and 2019 we worked on an Aretha Franklin tribute play. We visited the Charles H. Wright Museum and talked to the curator for her exhibit. We also talked with various people who attended, watched her funeral or were touched by her life, in order to compile a dramatic interpretation of how Aretha Franklin's life and death affected Detroiters. We did our first reading of this new collaborative work The Aretha Project in 2020.In 2022, we collected stories around us in the midst of the pandemic to craft "Detroit 2020", which explored the lockdown, election and health crisis through vignettes.