The lights dimmed, and thunder rolled in the UC Santa Cruz Mainstage Theater. A lone man flickered into view, and the warm tones of a trumpet swung into the air. Beside him, glowing brilliantly against the wall, was a blue neon sign:
“Paradise Blue.”
And so began one of African American Theater Art Troupe’s (AATAT) last performances of the quarter. The play of choice, ‘Paradise Blue,’ was written by playwright Dominique Morisseau and directed by Cultural Arts and Diversity (CAD) artistic director Don Williams.
“The production of ‘Paradise Blue’ was done extremely well at all levels, from the lighting to the sound to the set to the back stage managers,” Williams said. “We had incredible actors who took a deep dive into discovering and learning about their characters and worked extremely well with one another to create a united front of being able to tell the story.”
The play centers around Blue, the owner of the Paradise Blue bar in a neighborhood called Black Bottom, a lively Black community at the heart of Detroit. Throughout the performance, he struggles with deep, inner turmoil and deliberates between two options: Does he continue to run his bar and face his deep-rooted trauma tied to the space, or does he break away from this life, sell the bar, and make a name for himself in a town without the ghosts of his past?
“The memories of Blue carry a lot of grief and a lot of trauma, a lot of hurt,” said second-year Ikem Okoh, who played Blue. “So, to really play Blue believably, I had to really go there and find those places of grief and hurt that I could really instill in my heart and really feel in the moment. And it was difficult.”
But Blue’s decision also weighs on the other characters in the play. Pumpkin, Blue’s girlfriend, does her best to love Blue through his struggles. She gives and she gives, trying her best to help him through his pain. As Blue suffers, he pulls Pumpkin into his suffering with him, and it manifests into an abusive relationship.
“Something I think about with her character is that no one pictures their life to be abusive when they’re younger, you know. You don’t think ‘Oh, I’m gonna live this life and my significant other is going to hurt me,’” said fourth-year Mia Martin, the primary actress for Pumpkin. 
Blue talks about his plans to leave Black Bottom with Pumpkin. Courtesy photo by Steve DiBartolomeo.
The play puts complex, dynamic characters beneath the spotlight. The beauty and flaws of each individual make it difficult to pin judgment or blame on a character without simultaneously feeling sympathetic.
“That’s the hard part about humans in general: There is nuance,” Martin said. “We can get mad at someone and be like, ‘They’re just a bad person,’ but it’s like, ‘No, everyone has their own experiences [as] to why they’re like this’ … it’s hard to label them as good or bad.”
The characters on stage were not the only dynamic figures in the room. The audience immersed themselves in the emotions pouring out of the production, resonating with the energy in the air from their seats. Laughter was abrupt and contagious, hums echoed across the seats and silence was heavy.
“Dominique is a person with depth and breath and vision,” Williams said. “Dominique has wrote plays that really perked my interest because they deal with a lot of common, everyday folks, real Black life, authentic Black life. And it teaches people about being Black, what it really is, by the way that she writes.”
Pumpkin and Corn watch Blue and P-Sam argue about the future of the Paradise Blue bar. Courtesy photo by Steve DiBartolomeo.
This production marks the fourth play written by Dominique Morisseau that AATAT has performed. In the past, AATAT has also run ‘Pipeline’ (2023), ‘Skeleton Crew’ (2020), and ‘Detroit 67’ (2017). The three plays make up Morisseau’s “The Detroit Project,” a collection that takes place in Detroit during different time periods.
While they’ve wrapped up their on-campus performances, AATAT has two more, off-campus showings before the quarter ends. The next one is on March 8 at 7 p.m. at the Monterey Peninsula College Outreach Event. The final showing is the weekend after, on March 15 at 7 p.m. at the Oldemeyer Center in Seaside.
“I hope that [you] leave the theater and see … the authentic truth that young, Black actors do know how to be able to get into character and tell a story,” Williams said. “That you are overwhelmed, that your mind and your heart is arrested because they’re telling that story.”
