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. 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.

Pearl Clage's play is 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. 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.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Pearl Cleage is an Atlanta-based playwright currently serving as Distinguished Artist in Residence at The Alliance Theatre. The recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Dramatists Guild, she is also Atlanta’s first Poet Laureate. Her plays include Flyin’ West, Blues for an Alabama Sky, The Nacirema Society..., What I Learned in Paris and Angry, Raucous and Shamelessly Gorgeous. Her work is anthologized in Flyin’ West and Other Plays, published by Theatre Communications Group. In addition to the Alliance, Cleage has been widely produced, including performances at the Goodman Theatre, London’s National Theatre, the McCarter Theatre Center, Penumbra Theatre, Keen Company, Ford’s Theatre, the Huntington Theatre Company, the Guthrie Theater, Kenny Leon’s True Colors Theatre, Actor’s Express, the Black Repertory Company, the Old Globe, the Negro Ensemble Company, Arena Stage, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, the Ensemble Theatre, New Federal Theatre, and Actors Theatre of Louisville. Her work is widely taught and produced at colleges and universities across the country. She is also a performance artist working in collaboration with her husband, writer Zaron W. Burnett, Jr. Their groundbreaking performance work is the subject of a new documentary film Live at Club Zebra! directed by Matthew and David Adeboye. Cleage and Burnett also collaborated on In My Granny’s Garden, a book for young children, which was adapted for the stage by Rosemary Newcott and has been performed in Atlanta, Chicago and St. Louis. The author of eight novels, including What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day, a New York Timesbestseller, Cleage also co-authored with Burnett “We Speak Your Names,” a praise poem commissioned by Oprah Winfrey. She is currently preparing for the world premiere of her new play Flying Fish & Folding Money as a joint production between the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta and the Goodman Theatre in Chicago in 2028.—Concord Theatricals

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Concord Theatricals
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 20, 2026
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 82 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0822216345
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0822216346
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8 x 0.17 x 5 inches