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Etta Cox stars in "Skeleton Crew" at Barebones Black Box theater.
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Pittsburgh jazz legend Etta Cox becomes a Detroit auto worker in barebones’ ‘Skeleton Crew’

Duane Rieder

Pittsburgh jazz legend Etta Cox becomes a Detroit auto worker in barebones’ ‘Skeleton Crew’

When I catch up with Etta Cox, she’s leaving Pittsburgh CAPA 6-12, where she teaches, and heading to City Winery to soundcheck at the kind of elegant jazz gig that’s made her a local legend for more than five decades.

Next weekend, on the other side of town, the diva will be almost unrecognizable as the central character in the play “Skeleton Crew.”

In barebones productions’ take on the Dominique Morisseau drama about workers desperately trying to hang onto their jobs at a Detroit auto plant during the 2008 recession, Cox will step into the role of Faye, a part played on Broadway by Phylicia Rashad.

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“Skeleton Crew” follows “Paradise Blue” and “Detroit '67” as the third installment in a trilogy that has garnered Morisseau comparisons to legendary playwrights Arthur Miller and August Wilson in the New York Times.

“She's an older woman working in a factory,” Cox says of her character, “and she's been on the job for like 29 years and she's working with all younger people and she's the rep for the UAW. She curses, she smokes, she's a lesbian, so it’s really different for me.”

Barebones artistic director Patrick Jordan has wanted to stage “Skeleton Crew” at the Black Box Theater in Braddock since he saw it off-Broadway at the Atlantic Theater in 2016.

“I loved the story, I loved what it was about,” he says. “So I sought out to get the performance rights to do it here, and we were supposed to do this show in 2018 or ‘19. And then one of the actors that we had lined up got some other work and couldn't do it. And then we were gonna do it again in 2020, and the pandemic happened, so we had to push that off too.”

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Coming out of  COVID-19 pandemic, “Skeleton Crew” moved to Broadway for a three-month run beginning in December 2021, so Jordan lost the rights to it.

“I was like, ‘Oh well, you know, the bigger theaters [here] are gonna wanna jump on this once they got to Broadway,’ and for whatever reason, I guess they didn't,” Jordan says. “The second it became available again, we went after it again and went back and forth and we were able to secure the rights again for this year. We're thrilled that it kind of came around.”

In 2022, City Theatre staged “Paradise Blue,” about a trumpeter selling his jazz club. It’s also presented Morriseau’s “Sunset Baby” and “Pipeline” in recent years.

“I just think that she's one of the best voices in the American theater right now,” Jordan says. ”She just kind of hits it. And it's not lost on me that we're doing the show in Braddock and the play kind of revolves around the financial crisis that is happening, and it's one of the last small stamping plants in Detroit, on the way to closing down. Yes, it's an auto stamping plant, not a steel mill, but it just definitely has a Pittsburgh and a Braddock vibe to me.”

The four-actor ensemble piece also stars Saige Smith as Shanita, a young woman soon to be a single mom; Brenden Peifer as Dez, an edgy, streetwise kid with big ambitions; and Richard McBride as Reggie, the troubled, working-class supervisor caught between management and his crew.

There’s also a dancer, played by Mario Quinn Lyles, who emerges during scene transitions, which is appropriate in that the director, Tomé Cousin, is well known as a dancer, choreographer and member of the Carnegie Mellon University faculty.

“He's directed me in some workshops and he’s done some choreography and dance for previous shows where we had dance elements in the shows,” Jordan says. “He's great working with actors and he goes at a different pace and rhythm than we normally would use, so it's a welcome change.”

Cousin made the call to Cox, who came to Pittsburgh in the early ‘70s from her native St. Joseph, Missouri with her then-husband and began performing in local clubs while working a day job at Rockwell International. In 1979, she hit Broadway in the musical “I Love My Wife” and then became an understudy to Dee Dee Bridgewater in “The 1940’s Radio Hour.”

Back in Pittsburgh, she divided her time between clubs and theaters, appearing in City Theatre’s “Avenue X,” “Blues in the Night” and “From the Mississippi Delta” and Gargaro Theater’s “The Wiz,” “Beehive” and “Sophisticated Ladies,” for which she won the Post-Gazette’s Performer of the Year in 1999.

More recently, she played the former big-band singer Ruby in August Wilson’s “King Hedley II” for Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company (2018) and appeared in the August Wilson African American Cultural Center musical “Our Song” last year.

Needless to say, Motown auto worker on the verge of unemployment is a new one for Cox.

“Tomé Cousin called and asked me if I’d like to audition and I said ‘I never turned down an audition…for anything,’” she says.

“So, he sent me the sides and I read for it and I was driving away and I was thinking, ‘I don't think this is the kind of role for me. She's everything that I am not.’ So, I didn't even get home and he called and he said, ‘Would you like to have that part?’ And I went, ‘Suuure.’ That was just before New Year's Eve, and so I’ve been working real hard on it ever since. It's a lot.”

Jordan says it was a “pipe dream” to have Cox

“I mean, music is her forte and she's obviously a world-class singer and performer. Tome had worked with her several times, so they have a history — some musicals and some other things. Obviously, I'd seen her perform a million times, going back to Dowe’s on 9th. When she read through the script with us, it was just like, ‘Oh, it has to be her!’ She just kinda owns it and she's just fascinating to watch.”

Patrick is part of the creative team along with Andrew David Ostrowski (lighting), Claire Durr (stage manager) and Tony Ferrieri (set design) And while no one sings in “Skeleton Crew,” there is a score for the play that has been adapted for the barebones production.

As for the ambiance around the Black Box, it couldn’t be more real.

“The show takes place in the break room of a plant, right across the street from a working plant…the Edgar Thomson,” Jordan says. “It's obviously steel versus auto, but you'll be able to hear the bells and the whistles and the train going when you get out of your car and come to the theater. It’s kind of like Detroit.”

The play opens Feb. 23 and runs through March 10 in the barebones’ Black Box Theater in Braddock. Times next weekend are 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $40; barebonesproductions.com.

First Published: February 15, 2024, 10:30 a.m.
Updated: February 16, 2024, 4:12 p.m.

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Etta Cox stars in "Skeleton Crew" at Barebones Black Box theater.  (Duane Rieder)
Brenden Peifer, Etta Cox, Richard McBride and Saige Smith in barebones' "Skeleton Crew."  (Duane Rieder)
Brenden Peifer, Etta Cox, Richard McBride and Saige Smith in barebones' "Skeleton Crew."  (Duane Rieder)
Duane Rieder
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