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.
Upcoming Events
Breaking Laws to Gain Freedom: Liberating Stories form Detroit is a devised play about instances in Detroit's rich history that led to national impact. You can purchase tickets now at Open Book Theatre.
Extra Mile Playwrights Theatre
Join Extra Mile Playwrights Theatre for the premier of "Breaking Laws to Gain Freedom: Liberating Stories from Detroit"Friday, Nov. 8, 2024
Meet at 6pm @ Live6 Alliance at 7426 W. McNichols
Get tickets for show + bus ride
We look forward to entertaining you!
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 aka P.J Edghill is a writer, producer, director and brand strategist who has been telling the stories of people and brands for over 25 years. With a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theatre, she has applied her gift of storytelling to a multi-faceted career in media that includes theatre, television, fiction and marketing. Pat has worked with brands as diverse as General Motors to Reebok, produced TV shows that have appeared on IFC, Spike TV and Oxygen, and has written, produced and directed Off-Off-Broadway shows. She is also the creator of The Brand Root Method a branding methodology. Pat, under her pen name P.J. Edghill, is the author, director and producer of a fiction podcast – OVID’S FLEA, based on her novel of the same name. Her short story based on Hurricane Katrina, Ophelia & Crawler was published on AOL Black Voices. She is currently writing a farce which she plans to debut/workshop in 2020.
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, and one, “The Bucket List of Booze Club,” will be produced by the Freshwater Theatre in Minneapolis in May 2020.
Gail Parrish is an award-winning playwright whose works have been staged nationally, internationally and on network television. Her plays include Leavings, Bringing Back Josephine (Saving Grace), Elevator, Blood Red Summer and others. Some of Parrish’s awards include semifinalist in Eugene O’Neill Playwrights Conference, semifinalist in the American Blues Theatre’s Blue Ink Award, co-winner of Polarity Ensemble Theatre’s Dionysus Festival, an Emmy nomination from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences- Midwest and first prize in the Daimler-Chrysler Dreambuilder’s National Playwriting Competition. In addition to the Extra Mile Playwrights Theatre, Ms. Parrish is a member of Coming to the Table and Dramatists Guild. She received a bachelor’s degree in playwrighting and African American Studies from Howard University, and a master’s degree in Urban Planning from University of Illinois. She lives in Detroit Michigan.
Forest Hudson began his acting journey as a student at the Detroit Repertory Theatre, Actors Workshop. Acting and Theatre started out as a hobby, now they are his passions. His credits include Preying Wolves Pray, The Devils Funeral, Satin Doll The Musical, Broadz on Broadway, Matrix X Detroit/Gentrification Nation, Beating All Odds/A Miracle of Enchantment, and Love and Justice.
Johnice Littlejohn is an actor, writer, student, 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. 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. Currently, she is pursuing a degree in Osteopathic Medicine from Michigan State University (Go Green!). Johnice considers her love for both medicine and theatre as a way to continuously use both sides of her brain.
Shawntai Brown is a Detroit writer, media commentator, literacy coordinator and teaching artist. Her work centers on empowering communities through experiences that educate, challenge and entertain. She co-hosts a web show “Woman Crush Everyday” reviewing Black woman-centered queer media and interviewing content producers, and co-founded Black LGBT+ Plays, a creative development network for film and theatre creatives. Currently, Shawntai serves as the School Programs Manager with InsideOut Literary Arts. She is a board member and playwright with Extra Mile Playwrights Theatre and a 2020 Krege Live Arts Fellow. You can find more about her at sbscribes.com.
Karen Curtsinger is an improviser and actor in local community theatre. Her credits include: "Rimers of Eldritch", "Twilight: Los Angeles 1992", "You Can't Take it with You", "It Can't Happen Here", "The Man Who Came to Dinner", "I'm Sorry", "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", "67 Rebellion: A Memory Play", "Neighbors", and "Angel Thief". She is pleased to have written the Nurse scene in EMPT's, "Detroit 2020".
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.
He is grateful to be appearing again on the Purple Rose stage.
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.For our latest devised theatre piece, we collected stories around us in the midst of the pandemic to craft "Detroit 2020" which explores the lockdown, election and health crisis through vignettes. "Detroit 2020" will be performed December 4, 2022. Click below for tickets.
