FLINT, MI -- “Wrong River,” a play about a young family’s struggle through the Flint Water Crisis produced in Flint, will open for the public Friday night.
The play is scheduled to run from Feb. 4 to Feb. 20 at the Flint Repertory Theatre, 1220 E. Kearlsey St.
“Wrong River” was developed at the Flint Repertory Theatre’s 2020 New Works Festival. It is directed by Flint native Jeremiah Davison and written by Josh Wilder, a playwright that studied at Yale’s School of Drama.
Wilder traveled to Flint in the summer of 2016 to speak with the community and develop the story that is told in the “Wrong River” play while he was getting his Master’s degree at Yale.
It was then when he got the blessing of the community to write this play, he said. Wilder felt it was important that the play opens for its world premiere in the city that it is set in.
“I am just so excited that we are premiering it in Flint,” Wilder said. “I think that that is the kind of anthropological work that playwrights do -- going to a place and writing about a people.”
“Wrong River” is a family drama about the struggle to protect a child at the center.
“It is about the struggle it takes to keep that girl safe from what’s going on outside and, most importantly, what’s going on within herself,” Wilder said.
Curtis Morlaye, born in Liberia and raised in New Orleans, will star in the play along with actors Henri Franklin, Jade Radford, Madelyn Porter, Nikyla Boxley and Parris Sarter.
Morlaye’s been featured on NBC’s Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, CBS’s Blue Bloods, Fox’s Gotham, as well as “Lockdown,” a theater show at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater in New York.
Tickets for “Wrong River” range from $16-25 each and are available on the Flint Repertory Theatre’s website.
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