Detroit Public Theatre

As Detroit Public Theatre embarks on our inaugural season, your support will allow us to launch our artistic and community programs. As a not-for-profit theatre, our work will be made possible because of donors like you.

Please make a gift today and join us in building and sustaining Detroit Public Theatre.

DPT’s mission is to produce world-class plays and programs with world-class writers, directors, actors, and designers in the heart of Midtown’s thriving cultural district. The theatre will connect audiences and artists locally and across the country and invite Detroiters to discover plays that illuminate the joys, thrills and challenges of our shared human experience.

In addition to producing cutting-edge theatre for the city’s audiences, the Detroit Public Theatre will offer educational programs for students in Detroit schools as well as serve as the base for one of metro Detroit’s signature community art projects, Shakespeare in Prison.  

Key cultural leaders from throughout metro Detroit, including the staff of Ponyride, and the board and staff of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, are working to build a strong foundation for Detroit Public Theatre and ensure its future as a living, thriving pillar of the performing arts in Detroit. 

DPT is also working collaboratively with many of Michigan’s theatre leaders, who are strongly supportive of establishing an anchor regional theatre in Midtown Detroit that will bring more local and national attention to the work of the whole community. DPT will strive to bring Detroit in league with cities such as Philadelphia, Chicago, Minneapolis, Cleveland and Washington, D.C., where great regional theatres have contributed to their cultural revivals and artistic vibrancy.

The Detroit Public Theatre staff also includes Director of Programs Frannie Shepherd-Bates. Shepherd-Bates, a Detroit theatre veteran, was Founding Artistic Director of Magenta Giraffe Theatre Company, which will dissolve as DPT absorbs its successful Shakespeare in Prison program.

The inaugural season of Detroit Public Theatre will comprise four thought provoking, entertaining and thoroughly memorable productions. More information is available at www.detroitpublictheatre.org.