Collective Consciousness Comes Full Circle

As Collective Consciousness Theatre in Erector Square prepares to roll out its plans for 2023, artistic director Dexter Singleton thought back to 2021, when he first walked back into the theater after the pandemic shutdown in March 2020, which interrupted the company’s run of Dominique Morrisseau’s play Skeleton Crew. ​“We came back into CCT and we still had the Skeleton Crew set in there,” Singleton said. ​“Jenny” — Nelson, who directs many CCT productions — ​“said it was like walking into a time warp.”

Last month, the CCT crew reset the clock, doing an extensive cleanout of the space and getting it back to its basics — unadorned white walls, waiting to be painted and built out, according to the needs of the play the company does next. 

“So we’re ready,” Singleton said. ​“It’s been three years, It doesn’t seem like that long.”

But even though the theater itself was dark, the time between March 2020 and the present wasn’t a time of idleness for Singleton, or many others involved in Collective Consciousness Theater’s efforts. Rather, it was a time to continue to grow and nurture work that Singleton and others started 20 years before, with the mission of creating high-quality theater committed to social justice and grounded in the richness of the New Haven community and beyond.

Building Consciousness

Singleton grew up in Detroit, Mich. and studied theater — both acting and directing — as an undergraduate at Western Michigan University, in Kalamazoo. He emerged from that program in 1998 with several job offers; among them was to join the first year of an apprenticeship program at Long Wharf Theatre, funded by Sikorsky and overseen by then-artistic director Doug Hughes. That year-long program created a formative bond to the Elm City.

At the time, Singleton said, ​“I wanted to be an actor who sometimes directs,” but ​“I enjoyed directing so much that I already knew I wanted to be a director and an actor” by the time the program was over. Early in his career, he mused, ​“there were a lot of people who only knew me as an actor. Now they say, ​‘you used to act?’”

He left in 1999 for New York City, but found that he kept returning to New Haven for theater work. ​“I had built a lot of relationships with artists in the community,” he said. He was part of the cast of Long Wharf’s 1999 production of Much Ado About Nothing, set during the Harlem Renaissance and directed by Derek Anson Jones, hot off a very successful Off-Broadway run of Wit (tragically, he died the following year at the age of 38, from complications from AIDS). The Long Wharf production, starring Caroline Stefanie Clay and Michael Genet as Beatrice and Benedick, featured a dream-team all-Black cast, including ​“some of the biggest names in theater, TV and film,” Singleton said. Among them were James Avery and Geoffrey Owens, who had done runs on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and The Cosby Show, respectively. ​“James would shut down the block” in New Haven, Singleton recalled.

Singleton still considers that production one of his career highlights. ​“It was a great learning experience for me,” he said. ​“It was my first time working with a full room of all Black professionals, working at that level.” He counts among them mentors and peers. ​“A lot of those folks, I still look up to and still keep in touch.” It was a taste of things to come.

Through a mutual friend, Singleton also connected with New Haven-based playwright and performer Aaron Jafferis. ​“Aaron was looking for a director for his show No Lie,” which he planned to perform in schools and communities around New England, Singleton said. The friend suggested Singleton, who also had a solo piece called Little Brother that he wanted to perform. They ended up touring their pieces together. ​“We would do the shows and split the cost, and we were just there to support each other,” Singleton said. ​“That was my first time doing school tours and workshops, and engaging the community in a way I’d never seen before.” 

Their partnership soon began to pull others into their orbit. ​“It started to branch out to where he and I started to create more shows and cast other actors, to the point that we had several shows that were making money,” Singleton said. They had enough material to keep a couple dozen actors in work. ​“It was the early start of what Collective Consciousness Theatre would be, but we didn’t know that at the time. We were doing what we loved to do, and it was an opportunity to us to control the narrative,” from what the material would be, to how to roll it out to the public and engage with the community. 

“It was just really energizing,” Singleton said. He discovered a love of community theater ​“and the social justice aspect” of it. 

Meanwhile, Singleton ad Jafferis had essentially created a theater company. ​“It was organically created because we were touring,” Singleton said. In time, they ​“wanted some formality” to be able to apply for grants. ​“Someone else came up with the logo and the name,” Singleton said. ​“By default — because a lot of people didn’t want be director — they said, ​‘hey Dex, you do it!’ It fell on me, basically,” he said with a laugh. By 2007, the new organization, Collective Consciousness Theatre, was officially a nonprofit, and Singleton had moved out of New York altogether and back to New Haven.

The company was already renting space in Erector Square, using it to rehearse its touring shows. By then ​“a lot of our work was across the region” — from New York to Vermont, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island — but ​“because we were mainly working in schools, a lot of people didn’t know who we were. We were associated with youth theater. So we wanted to create something so that adult audiences could see us. We wanted to be able to reach more audiences than were in the schools.” The rehearsal space was thus built out into a small theater, and in 2014, the company premiered with Dominique Morisseau’s Detroit ​’67.

With a network of cast and crew already in place, CCT steadily built its audience through staging uniformly compelling plays written by Black and Brown playwrights, performed by deeply talented Black and Brown actors — all dramatically underrepresented on U.S. stages. One of the reasons for the high quality of their productions was because ​“there weren’t a lot of opportunities for actors of color” on other stages, Singleton wryly noted. ​“There was a real need for local talent to get more opportunities.” CCT ​“has given a home” for actors and playwrights alike. ​“We’ve been fortunate to find a lot of talent, but it says a lot about the state” that it was needed in the first place.

CCT’s focus meant that it broke new ground. In the area, ​“we were the first theater company to produce a Dominique Morisseau play. We were the first to present a Jackie Sibblies Drury play. These people who have become major, major playwrights, had their premieres with us. We’ve always kept our ears to the ground in terms of what playwrights are coming up” and ​“what issues matter to the New Haven community.”

Each production starts with finding the right work. Singleton quoted CCT director Jenny Nelson when he said that, first, ​“it’s about finding a really good play.” (Singelton added that Nelson is ​“a huge part” of CCT’s success. ​“She’s a fantastic director and producer and artist.”)

Since CCT’s founding, Singleton has also noticed a shift. First, there is growing support for CCT from other theaters. ​“We get so much respect from the theater community,” he said. ​“We’re so small and it’s a shoestring budget,” but he’s glad to hear from audience members that ​“y’all are doing as good work as anybody” and that ​“we come to CCT because we know we’re going to see something there we’re not going to see anywhere else.”

“It’s really awesome that people feel that way,” Singleton added.

Among the growing audiences for productions, Singleton saw ​“Yale come out in full force,” from Yale Rep leadership to drama students. Same went for Hartford Stage. ​“All the major theaters come out and support,” he said. ​“They have a great respect, and it’s mutual. We’re all presenting good, high-quality theater.” He also noted with satisfaction that ​“there’s more work by playwrights and actors of color” being performed at other theaters in the area. And ​“local artists are getting into that drama school.”

“The impact on the community has been tremendous,” he added with humility, ​“and I would like to think that CCT has had a part in helping that evolve.

Pandemic Recovery

As the dust settles from the effects of pandemic shutdowns, in the arts world, it has become clear that live theater among art forms perhaps suffered the most, and has taken the longest to return — which makes sense, given that theater thrives on gathering large groups of people to sit close together, sharing a common experience and, by necessity, air. Locally, Long Wharf is now in the process of reinventing itself after moving out of its long-held Sargent Drive space. Yale Rep persisted with institutional support but still maintains strict mask mandates. In March 2020, CCT was at the beginning of its run of Dominique Morrisseau’s Skeleton Crew when it was forced to shut down with the rest of the country.

“We were in our most successful season ever,” Singleton said, with its biggest audiences yet. ​“We felt like we were on a streak. People were getting to know about us.” The pandemic ​“just completely halted our momentum and it was heartbreaking.” Especially because, at first — like everyone else — ​“we thought it was just going to be a few weeks.”

Thanks to the network he had built over the years, however, Singleton found 2020 and 2021 to be a time of reinvention. Singleton has taught theater since the early 2000s, and before the pandemic, in addition to running CCT and teaching in UCONN’s theater department, Singleton had worked as a freelance director at TheatreSquared, in Fayetteville, Ark. As theater went virtual, he directed Zoom plays for companies in Pittsburgh, San Diego, and other places. He also got a call from TheatreSquare, asking if he was interested in working part time there, helping develop plays. Singleton agreed; it gave him a chance to ​“stretch my muscles.” 

The TheatreSquared job was all online at first, but as theaters have reopened, Singleton — still based in New Haven — now travels to Arkansas ​“as needed” to direct one show a season, direct a new play festival of staged readings, commission playwrights, and develop new work. And he has brought actors from CCT productions to Arkansas with him to perform there.

“People knew about our reputation for bringing living playwrights to the stage,” Singleton said. ​“I would never have had a career at other places if not for CCT.” And just as his work with CCT helped get him to TheaterSquared, so his work there ​“has given me an even bigger network that I can work with now” to strengthen CCT. There is a sense of ​“everything coming full circle.”

“We’ve been planning to come back for a long time,” Singleton said, noting that, with CCT’s small space, the company ​“wanted to make sure we could do it safely.” There was also the question of what play to stage. At first, ​“we had hoped we could do Skeleton Crew,” picking up where they left off, ​“but that ship passed” — even as he knows that he’ll work with its cast members again. ​“We’ll see all of those actors back with us,” he said.

Meanwhile, CCT is planning to reopen in March with a comedy directed by Jenny Nelson. ​“It’s a really great play that theater lovers will probably know,” Singleton teased. The company also plans to do readings of Jafferis’s play Smooth Criminal and other works. ​“The plan after that is to produce a full season again in 2023 – 24.”

CCT has also become part of the Theatre for Young Audiences USA BIPOC Superhero Project — a ​“huge national partnership” among theaters across the country, including the Kennedy Center, to create ​“20 plays with BIPOC superheroes at the heart of it,” Singleton said. ​“They’ll reach thousands and thousands of youth across the country.” As part of that effort, CCT is working with Kwik Jones, a Portland, Ore.-based playwright, who is ​“creating a play for us that’s going to focus on food insecurity. Post-pandemic, it’s an important issue in our community.” CCT will present and tour the play in middle schools and high schools, doing readings of it and workshops around it, in New Haven and across the state. ​“We’re super-excited to introduce Kwik’s work to the New Haven community,” Singleton said.

So CCT emerges from a tumultuous time for the theater world changed, but in other ways as steady as ever. ​“We’re staying with our core values as a company,” Singleton said. ​“We do this for local artists and for the community. It’s about the work, and using theater to change lives. We’re excited about being able to come back and do that again.”