Author, playwright and poet Pearl Cleage has been talking, writing and serving Atlanta since she made the city her home in 1969. Notably, she served as press secretary and speech writer for the first Black Atlanta mayor, Maynard Jackson.
Cleage was the first Atlanta poet laureate and she writes prolifically on issues of race, gender and social justice. Her newest production, “Something Moving: A Meditation on Maynard,” will have a special performance by the Palefsky Collision Project students at Woodruff Art Center’s Rich Theatre on Jan. 15 at 3 p.m. The full-scale show will premiere this fall at the Alliance Theatre.
Cleage joined “City Lights” host Lois Reitzes to preview the upcoming play.
“Maynard Jackson was such an important part of this city and of our growth and everything that has happened here in the last 50 years since he was elected,” said Cleage. She continued, “I don’t have a character of Maynard; I just don’t know how I could create a character that is as amazing as he was as a real person.”
The play was originally commissioned by Ford’s Theatre in Washington, and they had a production of the play in the fall of 2023. In the summer of 2023, the Palefsky Collision Project students used the text from “Something Moving” as the basis of their program. Each year, the Palefsky Project participants put together a show that is inspired by a text. The performance is on Jan. 15, and more information about the two showings is available here.
