A star-studded variety show fundraiser featuring artists and entertainers with ties to Michigan is coming to the Detroit Opera House on Saturday.
The performance will serve as the centerpiece of The Coney, a three-day, celebrity homecoming weekend running Friday to Sunday. The variety show at 8 p.m. Saturday has a line up that includes Highland Park native Tim Meadows, Detroit natives Sam Richardson and Diarra Kilpatrick, Grosse Pointe native J.K. Simmons, among others.
The Coney will also serve as a mini reunion for the 1990s sitcom, “Full House.” Dave Couiler, of St. Clair Shores, will be joined by former castmates Jodie Sweetin and Andrea Barber.
Tickets for the show are still available on Ticketmaster, beginning at $69. Other events throughout the weekend include a first pitch at a Detroit Tigers game, celebrity visits across the city to engage with youth and a private welcome party on Friday, according to a news release. The benefit show is the only event open to the public.
The Coney is raising funds for youth arts education organizations in Detroit, including establishing the Endowed Fund for Youth Arts at the Children’s Foundation of Michigan. Presenting sponsors include Bedrock, Rocket Companies, MoveDetroit and Shinola.
The inaugural event was created by comedian and actor Marc Evan Jackson (“The Good Place,” “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,”) and Children’s Foundation President and CEO Andrew Stein. Stein and Jackson are hopeful that The Coney can become an annual fundraiser, where arts organizations across the city will receive grants every year. People can place a bid or donate on The Coney website.
Jackson had the idea of a celebrity benefit show for a while, but it gained traction once he met Stein at a Detroit Homecoming event last year.
“This really started as Dad’s attempt to have a good story for his teenage daughter when he got home that night,” Stein said about his interaction with Jackson. “I went over to Marc and we ended up talking for about an hour. He told me about an idea that he had been kicking around in his head for a few years about a celebrity show.”
While Jackson is not from Michigan, he graduated from Calvin University in Grand Rapids and was a part of the now-defunct Second City Detroit in the late 90s, which was a satellite improv troupe of Second City Chicago. He and his wife Beth Hagenlocker also co-founded the Detroit Creativity Project in 2012, a nonprofit that teaches improv to middle and high school students in the city.
Jackson and Stein talked to BridgeDetroit about putting together the all-star lineup, details about the endowed fund and how the event got its Detroit-specific name.
BridgeDetroit: How did you come up with the name The Coney?
Jackson: We spent a few weeks going, “What’s this called? Is it the Detroit Celebrity Comedy Festival, the Detroit Celebrity Weekend?” We realized that we were running up against so many of those things, and so, The Coney is the shortest shorthand for Detroit ever. Andrew pitched it in a meeting. We started calling it that in that meeting, and never looked back. We did a brief search to see if it was something that’s already been used and it hadn’t, thankfully. This is a party for Detroit that will support, celebrate, and share Detroit with our friends who aren’t from here.
Stein: To do a chili dog-themed event at the Opera House felt like the perfect metaphor for what we’re hoping this is, which is very serious in its intention, goals and impact, but a whole lot of fun and messiness the night of.
BridgeDetroit: Can you explain more about the Endowed Fund for Youth Arts and how that will work?
Stein: We at the Children’s Foundation of Michigan manage about $200 million in philanthropic assets. Almost all of it is endowed, we’ve got the infrastructure to hold the endowment, invest it prudently, and then have it produce annual dollars that we get to use for grant making.
This Endowed Fund for Youth Arts is going to be used for organizations that serve kids in the city of Detroit and provide arts education and opportunities across a range of ages and across a range of mediums. Shortly after The Coney, we’re going to post on our website the process where organizations can submit a brief inquiry to be eligible for funding. Then we’ll be in conversation with organizations and give out a round of grants over the next couple of months after the event.
We’ve gotten a lot of input from leaders of arts organizations, other funders in the arts, and some of the things we heard is, there are organizations that have a lot of kids and we’re gonna look at getting some funding for those types of organizations. But we’re also going all the way down to some of the much smaller nonprofits in the city that operate on significantly smaller budgets, where a $10,000 or $25,000 grant might be the biggest thing that they get all year. We’re excited about the impact these dollars will have, and the endowment will allow us to do this year after year.
BridgeDetroit: What was it like coordinating the all-star lineup for The Coney and getting the performers back to Detroit?
Jackson: Everybody that I took this to, I would say, “Hey, I think we should bring everybody home at the same time and throw a huge Detroit party.” People were very quick to get on board and it was not a hard sell in the slightest. The difficulty with everybody is scheduling.
J.K. Simmons and I met on the first day of the Farmers Insurance campaign that he’s still doing. Sam Richardson and I met at Second City Detroit years ago. I don’t know Diarra Kilpatrick or Vondie Curtis-Hall yet, and I can’t wait to meet them. Everybody that’s from Detroit that loves Detroit, you’re basically family already.
BridgeDetroit: Can you share a little bit about who people can expect to see from the variety show?
Jackson: I don’t want to spoil any bits, but I can give you an overview. There’s going to be a band on stage that’s led by my friend, Phredley Brown. He’s from the Detroit area, and he is the (associate) music director for American Idol. He used to be the musical director for Bruno Mars and Katy Perry, and he’s assembled a band that will be doing live music. There’s going to be some Motown going on throughout the evening. Some comedy sketches, some cameos by local celebrities and sports people. It’s going to be a big, messy, fun variety show. It’s an opportunity to see some people that you know from television and film doing stuff that you don’t often get to see them do.
BridgeDetroit: Andrew, how are things looking on the funding side?
Stein: We’ve raised just over $2.5 million (for youth arts organizations). So, our initial goal when we started sketching this out a year ago, we thought, “Man, if we could raise $2 million, that would be pretty amazing.” Somewhere along the line, the goal became three, so now we’re at two and a half, which is huge. A huge thank you to Rocket (Companies), they came in as the presenting sponsor, we got support from The Skillman Foundation, (William) Davidson Foundation and some of the other local foundations. There were lots of companies, lots of individuals and families that bought sponsorship packages, and then we’ve gotten some money from former Detroiters who are living elsewhere. We’ve gotten gifts from families and foundations that are in Seattle, Chicago, Denver, New York. That’s one of the things that we really liked about this vehicle is it’s a different type of event, and it’s a reason and opportunity for people to plug back into their hometown.
BridgeDetroit: Marc, how does it feel to see The Coney come into fruition after wanting to organize a show like this for years?
Jackson: It couldn’t be cooler. I can’t believe it’s happening. The team we’ve assembled along the way has been full throttle from the very beginning. Without that, frankly, we wouldn’t be here. We threw a gathering on 313 Day at the Detroit Pistons Performance Center to unveil this to potential donors, sponsors and foundations, and from that moment, it’s been off and running. I couldn’t be more excited.