A play inspired by the 2014 Flint Water Crisis is coming to Kalamazoo this weekend as the second-to-last stop of its national tour.
Written by M.M. Haney and produced by Citizen56 and Uncommon Productions, “The Poisoner” follows an investigative journalist returning to his Midwestern hometown and stumbling across a government water-contamination coverup.
In Flint, state officials ignored mounting evidence of lead contamination in the water, leading to widespread lead poisoning including among children.
The performances are October 22-24 at 7:00pm at the Judy K. Jolliffe Theatre in The Epic Center.
After the Thursday show, Matt Schuster of Public Media Network and freelance journalist Kristen Aguirre will hold a talk-back about the importance of investigative journalism. Sandy Wynn of the Great Lakes PFAS Action Network will speak after the Friday show about keeping PFAS out of drinking water.
“Then you can build on that emotional human experience that the audience has had and connect that to these really high-stakes questions about local fights around data centers, around local fights around all kinds of public resources: water, electricity, access to housing, and how those kinds of resources and access to those resources is affected by decisions that can be buried in a kind of officialness that can feel kind of opaque from the outside,” director and two-time Obie Award winner Lee Sunday Evans said.
Evans did not experience the Flint Water Crisis firsthand, but she first faced the lingering effects in 2019 when she visited the Flint Repertory Theater and encountered a water fountain still taped over.
“I was really struck by how deep the breach of trust was about something as fundamental and elemental as clean, safe drinking water,” said Evans.
Connecting the real struggles of past and present Michigan communities is at the heart of “The Poisoner.”
“I think that there's a lot about the political stories that play out in the news that deep down are deeply emotional human stories,” said Evans. “Being able to look at them in a theater context, you're able to put the human drama kind of at the forefront.”
Tickets can be bought ahead of time online.
More information can be found at the Uncommon Productions website.