About the Play:

Skeleton Crew has become a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues and Male Monologues.

Skeleton Crew is a full-length drama by Dominique Morisseau. A makeshift family of workers at the last exporting auto plant in the city navigate the possibility of foreclosure. Power dynamics shift and the co-workers are pushed to the limits of survival. When the line between blue collar and white collar gets blurred, how far over the line are they willing to step?

Skeleton Crew is about a group of struggling auto workers in Detroit and their struggle to survive as the industry and their way of life is dramatically changed. In the breakroom of one of Detroit's last auto stamping plants, a makeshift family of four co-workers swap stories, share dreams, and take pride in their work. Set in 2008, at the start of the Great Recession, each of the workers have to make choices on how to move forward if their plant goes under. Shanita has to decide how she'll support herself and her unborn child, Faye has to decide how and where she'll live, and Dez has to figure out how to make his ambitious dreams a reality. Power dynamics shift as their manager Reggie is torn between doing right by his work family, and by the red tape in his office. Powerful and tense, Skeleton Crew is the third of Dominique Morisseau's acclaimed Detroit cycle trilogy.

Skeleton Crew premiered in 2016 off-Broadway at the Atlantic Theatre Company's Stage 2 in New York City, to unanimous critical acclaim, and transferred to the Atlantic's larger Linda Gross Theater. The play was a Finalist for the prestigious Susan Smith Blackburn Prize honouring the best English-language women writers worldwide, and is regularly performed in regional, college, and community theatre productions.

Cast: 2 female, 2 male

What people say:

"Clifford Odetts' dramas come to mind and so does the great Pittsburgh cycle of August Wilson. But Skeleton Crew is squarely in the tradition of Arthur Miller... A deeply moral and deeply American play." — The New York Times

"Morrisseau has heart... Her rough-edged dialogue even has a touch of the street poet." — Variety

"Like Lorraine Hansberry and August Wilson before her, Morisseau creates characters who don't merely speak, they sing with the vernacular of their community. Rarely has dialogue ever felt so much like eavesdropping on an actual conversation." — TheatreMania

"Unquestionably a strong, formidable work...Theatregoers won't want to miss." — Huffington Post

About the Playwright:

Dominique Morisseau is an African-American author, playwright, and screenwriter. She is perhaps best known as a writer for the comedy-drama Shameless on Showtime and as the author of The Detroit Project, a three-play cycle that includes Detroit '67, Paradise Blue, and Skeleton Crew.