A play about the rise and fall of a Midwest mayor is back in the spotlight

Show of hands please, Detroit: how many of you remember Carol T?

OK, this may be easier: how about Kwame Kilpatrick? Anyone? Name ring a bell?

They both stand as living legends of our city’s wildly outrageous past. There’s “Carol T,” for Teegardin, the raspberry beret-topped journalist for the Detroit News, then the Detroit Free Press, whose juicy, wildly provocative columns touched off a gossip-column war between the two papers for years in the 1980s. And Kilpatrick, Detroit’s youngest mayor ever when elected in 2002, who was embroiled in scandal, imprisoned for corruption, pardoned by Donald Trump, and reemerged here as an ordained minister and motivational speaker.

And while the two have never occupied the same room together, they will be dramatically intertwined beginning this weekend.

That’s because the play Strawberry — What Party? written by Teegardin, a dramatization of the most notorious soirée (or non-event) in Detroit history that helped spur Kilpatrick’s downfall, will be staged in four performances beginning Friday night at Marygrove Theatre.

The play is an adaptation of the book Teegardin wrote in 2011, Strawberry: How an Exotic Dancer Toppled Detroit’s Hip-Hop Mayor, which is still in print. She had just returned to Detroit from a stay in California “and it was in the news every day,” she remembers. “I was thinking, ‘What in the world is this?’ I was really into true crime at the time, reading every true crime book I could get my hands on, and I thought, ‘This is Detroit’s biggest true crime story and I want to find out about it.’ I wanted to solve the case.”

(For the uninitiated or forgetful, “Strawberry” was the performing nickname of Tamara Greene, a young Detroit exotic dancer who became the centerpiece of the notorious “Manoogian Mansion Party” in 2002. She was reportedly performing a lap dance on Kilpatrick as part of a wild, sex-fueled bash at the mayor’s residence when his wife at the time, Carlita, came home unexpectedly and began to bash her. Greene was murdered in a drive-by shooting several months later.)

“It’s still one of the longest unsolved cold cases in Detroit history,” Teegardin notes. “A lot of people disagree that there even was a party, but I believe there was. I have records from some of the police officers who were at the party, but they won’t confirm it. They were there but not there, I guess.”

Teegardin, who has a theater background and has successfully overcome kidney failure, was in the middle of dialysis treatments when the idea of a play began to mesh. “I was sitting in that room, getting my dialysis, and I didn’t have anything to do,” she recalls. “So I just pulled out my book to focus on something and thought, ‘I could adapt this into a stage play! This would be fun!’ Well, it was fun at first, but with all the health problems and setbacks I went through I spent four or five years on it.”

The play had its premiere in 2017 at the Marlee Boll Theatre in Detroit. Teegardin recalls that ticket sales were sluggish until she agreed to do a TV interview with Joanne Purtan on Channel 7 (WXYZ). “Then Boom! It went wildfire,” she says. “Sold out every night. Yeah, it was great.”

Does she expect the same type of response eight years later? In fact, why bring it back at all? “Because Kwame came back as a pastor!” she exclaims. “He was pardoned by Trump and came back to Detroit as an ordained minister. He’s got a podcast, was remarried at the Little Rock Missionary Baptist Church, he’s visiting churches, and it all sounds great. But he still owes over $1 million in restitution to the city and hasn’t paid it.

“He doesn’t believe he owes it, but it’s like the IRS: you still have to pay, whether you believe you owe it or not. Still, many people in Detroit still love him. If you watch the videos of his appearances here, he’s beloved. The guy who said he’d come back, and here he is. I wanted something to do, so I thought, ‘Time to rewrite the script!’”

Veteran Detroit-based actor Roosevelt Johnson, known for his roles in the films Dance With the Devil and Urban Warfare, plays Kilpatrick in the production. Detroit native Autumn Russell appears as “Strawberry” Greene and Bre Nicole Jay plays her best friend. Teegardin is effectively producing the play herself. Detroit theater veteran Mary Bremer-Beer is the director; stage manager Mary Johnson handles the box office and other support functions.

Hopefully not an omen, this 2025 revival of Strawberry — What Party? has been postponed twice. “The first one was because I got sick and had to have surgery,” she says. “Then the actor who was playing Kwame and the one playing Strawberry both left the cast at the same time. He contracted COVID and she went into the hospital. It was a nightmare.”

This cast appears hale and hearty, Teegardin notes. And while she doesn’t expect Kilpatrick to be in the audience, she does recall one memorable encounter with his father, Bernard. “We ended up squished in next to each other on a Spirit flight,” she relates. “I asked him about the party. He said there was never any party. I gave him a copy of my book and he said he’d meet with me after he finished reading it.

“He ghosted me.”

The play Strawberry — What Party? written by Carol Teegardin will be staged at 8 p.m. April 11-12, 8 p.m. April 18 and 3 p.m. April 19 at Marygrove Theatre, 8425 W. McNichols Rd., Detroit. Tickets, $50 for VIP, $30 general admission, $20 for seniors, and $15 for students, are available at the door or at eventbrite.com.