Courtesy photo
Playwright Ellen K. Anderson has been such a part of Santa Barbara’s arts scene for decades, not just writing award-winning plays, but helping found Access Theatre, leading the arts collaborative I.V. Arts and heading Dramatic Women, that one forgets her roots are in Detroit. It’s where she grew up, it’s where she earned her B.S. and M.A. (at Wayne State University). It was the subject of her most recent play, “Bedtime for Detroit,” and now she returns tonight with a second Motor City play, “In the Forest of Detroit.”
“Detroit gave me everything,” she says. “Including the uprisings (aka Detroit race riots in 1967) when I was in junior high. It gave me a damn good college education. I was the first to go to college in my family.”