Having already advanced past the Zone, District and Bi-District levels, The Westfield High School Theatre Department’s Mustang Players are headed this weekend to Magnolia High School to compete in the Area meet for the 2024 Texas UIL One-Act Play Contest. 

First, however, the troupe is giving members of the Spring ISD community a chance to catch the show locally when they perform their adaptation of Dominique Morisseau’s “Detroit ‘67” at 6 p.m. on Thursday, April 11 at the Westfield High performing arts center.

“It’s a lot of hard work,” said senior Mariah Simon, who plays Chelle, “but seeing the connection that people who aren’t on stage have with the show is the best part about performing it.”

The play marks a return for the Mustang Players, both to the historical Detroit setting and to the intense world of playwright Morisseau, whose work Westfield Director of Theatre Monet Salone has been drawing on for the past few years to inspire and bring out the best in her young actors and crew members.

Both last year’s “Pipeline” and 2022’s “Paradise Blue” were also written by Morisseau, with the latter play taking the Mustang Players all the way to a third-place win at the state UIL meet.

“She’s my favorite playwright,” Salone said, “and ‘Detroit ’67’ is part of her three-play cycle called ‘The Detroit Project,’ along with ‘Paradise Blue’ and ‘Skeleton Crew.’”

Adapting the full-length plays for her own students takes work, but Salone said she knows it’s worth it when she begins to see her cast and crew come alive as they uncover themes in the work that resonate with them and their own experience.

“It’s hard at first,” Salone said, “but then when we get to character work and table work – where they can finally make connections to people in their family and people that they know – then it starts to become a labor of love. That’s the kind of literature that I like to choose for my students – something that really speaks to them and something they can connect with.”

Set during the riots that took place in Detroit in July of 1967, ultimately resulting in dozens of deaths and more than 1,000 injuries, the play’s converging themes – of racial inequality and discrimination, segregation, poverty, and police violence – offered Salone’s students a theatrical lens through which to explore topics that are still relevant in today’s world.

“Bringing this to life was really, really hard, but we’re able to do it with the help of the set and crew and our castmates,” said senior Melany Menendez, who plays the role of Caroline.

Audience members who attend this Thursday’s performance at Westfield – or who make the trip to the Area UIL meet on Saturday in Magnolia – may notice some familiar faces in the cast, and it will come as no surprise to longtime Westfield Theatre fans that the show’s crew and actors have been winning awards at every stop along the way so far this year, including Best Performer awards, All-Star Cast awards, Best Technical Crew, and Best Technical Student awards.

Senior Immanuel Poole, who plays Lank in the show, is one of those multiple-award-winning actors. He said that Salone’s students appreciate the way she challenges them each year with the plays she selects.

“Our director doesn’t pick shows lightly, and so when she picks them, the subject matter of it all is very important,” Poole said. “You can look up and see what happened in Detroit in 1967, but what our play does, and what our story does, is it gives you an intimate look on these people’s lives and what their hopes and dreams were, how they operated from day to day, and how it all impacted them.”

Junior Karissa Williams said that the tight bonds between the cast and crew members – some of whom have been working on theater productions together since middle school – give them the emotional space needed to dive deep into such difficult topics.

“Our relationships outside of the show, I would say they really help,” Williams said, “because the bonds that you see on stage are real.”

Tickets for Thursday’s community performance are just $5 and are available at: our.show/detroit67. Note that, due to intense themes and subject matter, the production is for mature audiences.