Here’s a trade secret: most writers hate coming up with titles for their work.

In some cases, however, the act of naming allows the author to posit an idea that might not otherwise be mentioned within the piece itself, thus pointing the audience in a thematic direction before the lights even go down.

Such is the case with Dominique Morisseau’s Pipeline, now being staged by Detroit Public Theatre. Though outwardly about a black student (Omari, played by Yakeem Tatum) at a mostly white private school who’s filmed pushing a teacher against a whiteboard – and the ensuing fallout conversations that occur between his public school teacher mother Nya (Lisa Strum) and his estranged, emotionally distant attorney father Xavier (Brian Marable) – the title clues us in to a bigger picture; one that looks beyond the scope of Morisseau’s narrative and hints at how a young man’s entire future could be shaped by his actions on a few of the hardest days of his adolescence. READ THE REST HERE