Dominique Morisseau's ferocious hometown pride inspired The Detroit Project, a trilogy of dramas set at three distinct periods in the city’s history. She had written two plays about Detroit’s history—set in 1949 and 1967—and found her inspiration for the final play on her way out of a wedding reception, when she and her husband met a woman in the parking lot of a ‘very fancy’ Detroit hotel who was living in her car. They spoke with her and got into their own car. “We were just devastated at the idea that this is a city of people who make cars,” says Morisseau of the encounter. “How did we become a city of people living in their cars? I had to investigate that.”
Skeleton Crew is set in the winter of 2008, at one of the last operating stamping plants, as rumors swirl of a shutdown. Morisseau was unfamiliar with the inner workings of the auto industry, but as a native of the Motor City, she understood the stakes of portraying them with accuracy. “We’re so misrepresented that Detroiters are very protective about the narrative of the city. I write from a place of love and not condemnation, [but] it’s still a great responsibility,” she explains. “Automakers don’t get the chance to have their stories told like this.”
Morisseau conducted intense research to write the play: reading books on the city’s history and stamping plants, watching documentaries, and interviewing union activists and auto industry employees, including many members of her own family. (“From engineering to working the line: sewing interior, installing shocks—those are the things that people in my life have done.”)
Skeleton Crew tackles the corrosion of the American Dream, and the economic, racial, and social tensions of a city, a workforce, and a nation. But Morisseau personalizes these conflicts, revealing the human-scale impact of these larger systemic issues. Her expansive themes play out on an intimate canvas: Skeleton Crew follows only four characters and is set in a small factory, rather than one of the Big Three automakers. And while Morisseau offers insight into the factory’s operations, the play unfolds during off-the-clock moments in the breakroom, a fluorescent-lit way station between the precision of the line and the uncertainty of the future.
As tensions mount, it’s Morisseau’s evocative language that best articulates the workers’ struggle to survive. Their banter, riffs, and confrontations—grounded in their anxieties and hopes and histories with each other—are a powerful currency, posing urgent questions and revealing startling truths. As the factory's foursome negotiate the line between compliance and defiance, Morisseau's empathetic storytelling creates a new narrative for a maligned, misunderstood place and the people who call it home.