Biography

Playwright Pearl Michelle Cleage was born on December 7, 1948 in Springfield, Massachusetts. Cleage is the youngest daughter of Doris Graham and Albert B. Cleage Jr., the founder of the Shrine of the Black Madonna of the Pan African Orthodox Christian Church. After graduating from the Detroit public schools in 1966, Cleage enrolled at Howard University, where she studied playwriting. In 1969, she moved to Atlanta and enrolled at Spelman College, married Michael Lomax and became a mother. She graduated from Spelman College in 1971 with a bachelor’s degree in drama.

Cleage has become accomplished in all aspects of her career. As a writer, she has written three novels: What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day (Avon Books, 1997), which was an Oprah’s Book club selection, a New York Times bestseller, and a BCALA Literary Award Winner; I Wish I Had a Red Dress (Morrow/Avon, 2001); and Some Things I Never Thought I’d Do, which was published in 2003. As an essayist, many of her essays and articles have appeared in magazines such as Essence, Ms., Vibe, Rap Pages, and many other publications. Examples of these essays include “Mad at Miles” and “Good Brother Blues.” Cleage has written over a dozen plays, some of which include Flyin’ West, Bourbon at the Border, and Blues for an Alabama Sky, which returned to Atlanta as part of the 1996 Cultural Olympiad in conjunction with the 1996 Olympic Games. In addition to her writing she has been an activist all her life. Starting at her father’s church, The Shrine of the Black Madonna. Cleage has been involved in the Pan-Africanist Movement, Civil Rights Movement, and Feminist Movement. She has also been a pioneer in grassroots and community theater. (Full bio)

Plays

HOSPICE (1983)

In Hospice, we meet mother and daughter Alice and Jenny. Alice is a talented and successful poet who married young but abandoned her husband and daughter, then aged 10, to pursue her art, career, and an independent life. Jenny is 30 and pregnant, and Alice, diagnosed with terminal cancer, has returned from the glamorous life in Paris to die in peace at the family home. (Source)

 Cast Requirement: 2 (2f)

Characters: Alice Anderson, Jenny Anderson 

Publication: Hospice in New Plays for the Black Theatre. Third World Press, 1989. (Link)

Hospice. Alexander Street Press, 2008. (Link)*

FLYIN’ WEST (1992) 

Facing problems ranging from the inevitability of long, cold winters, to the possibility of domestic violence, to the continuing spectra of racial conflict, the women of Flyin’ West include Miss Leah, the old woman whose memories of slavery and its aftermath comprise a living oral history; Sophie Washington, whose determination to protect her land and those she loves puts to rest forever the requirement that western archetypes be white and male; Fannie Mae Dove, the gentle sister, trying to civilize the frontier with fine china and roses, who finds herself falling in love with their soft-spoken neighbor, Wil Parish; and Minnie Dove Charles, the headstrong baby sister whose mulatto husband, Frank, introduces a danger into the household that tests their sisterhood in unexpected ways. (Source)

Cast Requirement: 6 (4f, 2m) 

Characters: Sophie Washington, Miss Leah, Fannie Dove, Wil Parrish, Minnie Dove Charles, Frank Charles 

Publication: Flyin’ West and Other Plays. Theatre Communications Group, 1999. (Link)

Flyin’ West. Dramatists Play Service, 1995. (Link)

CHAIN (1992) 

Chain is a one-character play presenting Rosa, a sixteen year old crack addict, whose parents have chained her inside the house in a desperate attempt to keep her away from drugs. (Source) 

Cast Requirement: 1 (1f)

Characters: Rosa Jenkins

Publication: Flyin’ West and Other Plays. Theatre Communications Group, 1999. (Link)

LATE BUS TO MECCA (1992) 

Late Bus to Mecca explores the relationship of two women who meet in the Detroit bus station and find their lives suddenly joined in unexpected ways. (Source) 

Cast Requirement: 2 (2f)

Characters: Ava Johnson, A Black Woman 

Publication: Flyin’ West and Other Plays. Theatre Communications Group, 1999. (Link)

BLUES FOR AN ALABAMA SKY (1995)

It is the summer of 1930 in Harlem, New York. The creative euphoria of the Harlem Renaissance has given way to the harsher realities of the Great Depression. Young Reverend Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., is feeding the hungry and preaching an activist gospel at Abyssinian Baptist Church. Black Nationalist visionary Marcus Garvey has been discredited and deported. Birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger is opening a new family planning clinic on 126th Street, and the doctors at Harlem Hospital are scrambling to care for a population whose most deadly disease is poverty. The play brings together a rich cast of characters who reflect the conflicting currents of the time through their overlapping personalities and politics. Set in the Harlem apartment of Guy, a popular costume designer, and his friend, Angel, a recently fired Cotton Club back-up singer, the cast also includes Sam, a hard-working, jazz-loving doctor at Harlem Hospital; Delia, an equally dedicated member of the staff at the Sanger clinic; and Leland, a recent transplant from Tuskegee, who sees in Angel a memory of lost love and a reminder of those “Alabama skies where the stars are so thick it’s bright as day.” Invoking the image of African-American expatriate extraordinaire, Josephine Baker as both muse and myth, Cleage’s characters struggle, as Guy says, “to look beyond 125th Street” for the fulfillment of their dreams. (Source)

Cast Requirement: 5 (2f, 3m)

Characters: Angel Allen, Guy Jacobs, Delia Patterson, Sam Thomas, Leland Cunningham

Publication: Flyin’ West and Other Plays. Theatre Communications Group, 1999. (Link)

Blues for an Alabama Sky. Dramatists Play Service, 1999. (Link)

BOURBON AT THE BORDER (1997) 

When May and Charlie joined hundreds of other Americans who went to Mississippi in the summer of 1964 for a massive voter registration drive, they had no idea their lives were about to change forever. As students at Howard University, their campus activism had been met with calls to their parents and threats of expulsion. The stakes in Mississippi were a lot higher. White supremacists, outraged at the challenge to their segregated way of life, responded with violence that left three civil rights workers dead and many wounded. Years later, May and Charlie are still searching for a way back from the damage that was done to them during that long ago “Freedom Summer.” Unable to confide even in her best friend, Rosa, about the demons that haunt her dreams and twist Charlie’s love for her into something she can no longer recognize, May is convinced that if she can just get Charlie to leave Detroit and cross the bridge to Canada, they can start a new life. But when Rosa’s friend Tyrone gets Charlie a job as a truck driver, the madness of that summer bubbles over until it threatens all of their very lives. (Source) 

Cast Requirement: 4 (2f, 2m)

Characters: May Thompson, Rosa St. John, Charles Thompson, Tyrone Washington

Publication: Flyin’ West and Other Plays. Theatre Communications Group, 1999. (Link)

Bourbon at the Border. Dramatists Play Service, 2005. (Link)

A SONG FOR CORETTA (2007) 

On February 6, 2006, people began lining up at dawn outside of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church to pay their respects to the late Mrs. Coretta Scott King, widow of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose body lay in state in the small sanctuary. By mid-morning, the crowd wound down the street and around the corner of the old red brick building. People of all ages stood patiently for hours, waiting to say goodbye. Sometimes they murmured to each other quietly. Sometimes they shared memories of Mrs. King’s extraordinary life and expressed sorrow at her passing. When a cold rain began to fall at sunset, those who had thought to bring umbrellas shared them with those whose resolve was the only thing not dampened by the drizzle. At close to midnight, the crowd had dwindled to a determined few. The five fictional characters in this play are at the end of that long line of mourners. (Source) 

Cast Requirement: 5 (5f)

Characters: Helen Richards, Mona Lisa Martin, Zora Evans, Keisha Cameron, Gwen Johnson 

Publication: A Song for Coretta. Dramatists Play Service, 2008. (Link)

THE NACIREMA SOCIETY REQUESTS THE HONOR OF YOUR PRESENCE AT A CELEBRATION OF THEIR FIRST ONE HUNDRED YEARS (2010) 

 In the winter of 1964, ten years after the Montgomery bus boycott, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is planning a massive voter registration drive that promises to put the city back at the center of the Civil Rights Movement. Among those watching closely is Grace Dunbar, pillar of Montgomery’s African-American aristocrats and doyenne of the Nacirema Society, an organization poised to celebrate its 100th anniversary by presenting an exclusive group of debutantes at their annual cotillion. Assisting Grace is her lifelong friend, Catherine, who hopes the cotillion will prompt her grandson to propose to Grace’s granddaughter. Of course, neither woman considers the fact that their grandchildren have their own plans. The anticipation is overshadowed by the arrival of Alpha Campbell, daughter of the Dunbar family’s late maid. Alpha has plans to blackmail the Dunbars into financing her own daughter’s education. But Alpha’s story is closer to the truth than anyone could have imagined, and Alpha is surprised. So is Janet Logan, a visiting reporter from the New York Times who finds herself in the middle of a story that Grace will do anything to suppress. (Source)

Cast Requirement: 9 (8f, 1m)

Characters: Grace Dubose Dunbar, Gracie Dunbar, Marie Dunbar, Catherine Adams Green, Bobby Green, Alpha Campbell Jackson, Lillie Campbell Jackson, Janet Logan, Jessie Roberts

Publication: The Nacirema Society Requests the Honor of Your Presence at a Celebration of Their First One Hundred Years. Dramatists Play Service, 2013. (Link)

ANGRY, RAUCOUS, AND SHAMELESSLY GORGEOUS (2019) 

A lifetime ago, actress Anna Campbell and manager Betty Samson ignited a major theatrical controversy with a performance of monologues from August Wilson’s Fences that came to be known forever as Naked Wilson. After decades of self-imposed exile in Amsterdam to escape the critics, they receive an invitation to perform the show at a women’s theatre festival promising to be “angry, raucous, and shamelessly gorgeous.” Uncertain of what kind of reception she will get, and unmoved by Betty’s reassurances, Anna’s insecurity grows when she meets Pete Watson, the ambitious young performer who has been chosen to replace Anna in the role but whose theatrical experience is so far limited to the adult entertainment industry. Searching for common ground, Anna and Pete must confront their ideas about themselves and each other as they reconcile two vastly different worldviews. (Source)

Cast Requirement: 4 (4f)

Characters: Anna Campbell, Kate, Betty Samson, Pete

Publication: Angry, Raucous, and Shamelessly Gorgeous. Dramatists Play Service, 2022. (Link)

WHAT I LEARNED IN PARIS (2012) 

A tangled web of romantic intrigue, set against the backdrop of a historic campaign win for Maynard Jackson, who has just been elected Atlanta’s first first African American mayor. J.P. Madison, a prominent lawyer, is riding high after the good news of this hard-fought election win, alongside him, his new wife Ann, stalwart campaigner Lena, and his junior partner, John. But then, JP’s ex-wife Eve sweeps back into town and brings with her the temptation of knowledge from far flung corners of the world. This turn of events promises to turn lives upside down as each character is confronted with expectations, obligations and human emotions and the pull and tug that destiny has on our lives. (Source) 

Cast Requirement: 5 (3f, 2m)

Characters: Evie Madison, J.P. Madison, Lena Jefferson, John Stanton, Ann Madison 

Publication: NA

TELL ME MY DREAM (2015) 

There was a not-so-long-ago moment when making music and making history were part of the same Atlanta dream. In 1910, that dream became a music festival that made history and changed the lives of two unsuspecting middle school time travelers forever. Take a trip back to the time before Instagram and ear buds when friendship could build a bridge to freedom. (Source)

Cast Requirement: 6 (2f, 4m)

Characters: Mary Solomon, Jeremy Glass, Wallace Anderson, Henry Butler, Reverend James Solomon, Anna Butler 

Publication Info: NA

POINTING AT THE MOON (2018) 

Thirty years after Hospice, Jenny Anderson, now almost 60, is a well-respected scholar and literary critic who finds herself reluctantly drawn into the swirl of political and cultural changes that began after the 2016 American Presidential election. Despite her efforts to remain safely above the fray as a tenured college faculty member, she suddenly finds everything she’s worked for threatened by efforts to censor and suppress creative work, including her own. When a young activist shows up at her door late one night with an urgent request for help, Jenny has to choose between her own comfortable life and her deeply held beliefs about the nature of freedom. (Source) 

Cast Requirement: 2 (2f)

Characters: Jenny Anderson, Isabel 

Publication: NA