Always Making Space for New Ideas

05.26.2026

An Interview with playwright Pearl Cleage

By Amy Levinson, Geffen Playhouse Associate Artistic Director

AMY LEVINSON: Can you speak about your inspiration to explore generational divides and differences in this play?

PEARL CLEAGE: The easy answer is the truthful answer. I got old! I became the older person in almost every room: in a rehearsal room, in a project room, whatever it was. It’s kind of a startling thing to realize that you have become (and people have all kinds of romanticized ways of talking about it) an elder. Those labels imply a kind of wisdom that comes with years. But I don’t know if I agree that years make you gain wisdom. I do think that realizing that you are of the age where people can rightfully call you an elder makes you ask, What is my role now? How can I talk to the younger people who are trying to do this work, who may ask, “tell me about how you did this or did that?” And those are the easy questions! For the tougher ones, what good advice can I give people? The hard thing is figuring out how to make a space for them. And you can only do that by stepping aside—by not trying to be the one who does everything, by not trying to be the one who always thinks that your way is the only way to do it.

That’s the challenging part, especially, I think, for my generation, because we’re so used to thinking of ourselves as the young ‘60s revolutionaries, and now we’re like seventy-five years old, and it’s a different kind of revolution. New rules apply. So, I was thinking a lot about generational conversations, how to listen without critiquing everything that they say.

I worked with a youth program at the Alliance Theatre for fourteen summers, high school seniors and juniors, and the hardest thing was just to listen to what a different world they live in without telling them how to make it better, or how to correct it, or how to navigate it. Because being a kid growing up now is different than being a kid when I was growing up. So, I really think that experience helped me understand how important it is to listen to them and to only offer advice when they ask for it. You know, if they don’t ask for it, don’t do it. And I could definitely see in Anna a lot of that raging against being older. We all go through it. Some of us handle it more gracefully than others, but we all go through it. And now we have to figure out what is helpful and interesting for us and for them.

AL: The play has this wonderful thread about the evolution of artists and art, and I was wondering how you’ve felt that evolution in your own work.

PC: I feel like the biggest thing for me as a playwright, and it still is happening, which is good, is that I learned to trust the audience more with every play. Especially now that their attention spans move so much faster. They’re not looking for a four-hour evening at the theater. So, it’s about learning to trust the audience. Can I get to the heart of the idea without a lot of embroidery? And that’s always the temptation, you know, to write pretty pictures as opposed to making the point. That was a great monologue, but did it really move the play forward? And sometimes you have to say, Damn, no, it didn’t. Okay, get rid of it. But if it moves the play forward, great. Trust the audience to get it if you do it right. This forces me to keep working harder to say what I have to say without the flourishes. Just say it.

AL: I remember seeing a production of Flyin’ West in the ‘90s and being so awestruck by your capacity to imitate the style of theater in the time period in which the play took place. You had borrowed these strands of melodrama. And in a different way, I feel that simultaneity in this play. You’re addressing the very frustration within the play about a dearth of roles for Black women. And as you ask the question, you’re answering it with the roles in this play. So, I wondered where you begin with these layers. Are you struck with an idea of what you want to write, or do you start with a character who comes to you, and that evolves into that idea?

PC: It’s usually a character, a character who has something driving her crazy—usually her—although sometimes the main character is actually the man. But most of the time, it’s a character, and whatever is driving that character crazy is usually something that’s driving me crazy, too. What am I worried about? And how can I think about it through this character? But I’m always very careful not to make that character me. You know, I do a lot of work on making sure characters are who they are, not me pretending to be Anna, but to actually realize that we’re both grappling with the same problem, me and this character, but she’s dealing with it very differently.

It’s interesting what you said about Flyin’ West because somebody came up to me after that show and was just talking to me about how much she enjoyed the symbolism of the apple pie, you know, the all-American apple pie, and how great it was that I had put the symbol in there, and I started laughing, because I didn’t put it in there as a symbol of anything! My mother gave me a great recipe for apple pie, and I almost never bake, but I have this recipe on a little piece of pink paper that belonged to my mother. My mother had passed away by then, and I just did it because I was thinking about my mom and how much I wished she could see the play. But I told the person who asked me the question, I’m totally going to say that the next time somebody asks me about that play. I’ll say I did it for the all-American symbol!

So, I appreciate you saying that about melodrama and reflecting the style of the period of the thing. I’m not sure I did that, but I do love melodrama. I love things where you have to feel something deeply, where the person is probably feeling it so deeply that they’re taking risks and doing something that you would not do, and there are just all of these huge emotions roiling around—I love that kind of work. I’m not a big fan of things that only demand your intellectual involvement. I want people to feel something for these characters, not to just think about them.

In this play I tried to allow Anna to have rage but also ensure that she’s not just a monstrous old lady who’s harassing younger women. How can I think about what she’s dealing with? I have lots of friends who are actors and dancers, and age strikes them differently than it does me. You know, I can be in my office, and if it takes me longer to write the play now than it did when I was thirty, it’s not a problem, because I’m still working by myself and the steps are the same. But if you’re a dancer, you have to worry about your knees, you have to worry about your hips. And if you’re an actor, you start forgetting your lines. You don’t have the same confidence in your ability to get up there and remember everything Medea had to say before she stabbed her children. I have watched a number of my friends just stop acting because they could no longer do the memorizing. And it’s a heartbreaking thing.

So, I had all of that to work with when I was thinking about Anna, which is why she doesn’t say that until later in the play: that she walked out on the stage and couldn’t remember a single thing. Her signature role, you know, and I couldn’t imagine if at a certain point I couldn’t write anymore. When somebody says, well, I’m sorry, but you can’t do that anymore, the thing you’ve always done—what you love so much. So, I understood Anna’s rage, and I knew that rage would have to be the step before she came to understand what her next role was.

AL: So, part of Anna’s rage about Pete is stepping through the judgement? Which again works on a few levels because the audience has a ways to go with their judgements about Pete.

PC: It’s important with Pete that I ask older people not to judge younger people. So, I thought what would be the judgiest thing Pete could possibly do? Now I know people who are liberal about most things, and they consider themselves to be women of the world. They’re so cool, but the minute you mention pornography, anything about that industry, they are absolutely not ok. They instantly turn and say, ”This is terrible! These women are all dope fiends! They’re being exploited by awful men,” all of that. And in reality, many of these women have a really interesting idea about what they do. But it takes a long time for people to get past their fear of pornography. They may have seen some awful pornography, because most people don’t look at enough to decide, this is fine, but I don’t like that. They just decide it’s all bad. So, in writing Pete as someone who is not only moving around in that world, but has an idea of how to improve it, there’s something in that. She learned from doing this work where her boundaries are.

And Anna, of course, can’t see any of that—she’s too busy judging the pornography. And I think the audience does that too. But then, if I’ve done it right, both Anna and the audience will come to see Pete in a different light. So, they have to question themselves, their judgments.

I always love it if a play can make you say, well, I never thought about it like that. Especially if I can do it without hitting one over the head with a sermon. And I hope that’s what Pete can do, and what Pete and Anna’s relationship can do. I think that’s a moment of permission—no matter what these wild girls have done, we’ve made a space for them to do it, and we have to let them enjoy that space, and we have to take pride in the fact that we’re the ones who made that space. We didn’t say except if you’re going to do this, or except if you’re going to wear that.

I think we have to be able to be in the world, to look at the world, to think about the world, to write about the world, to engage people who are actually living and moving around in the real world, and not some idealized version that we might still hold in our imaginations. We have to be able to open up to whatever the modern stuff is, in life and in the theater. Now, an exception: I do not believe in robots on the stage pretending to be people. I will never get behind that. I want human beings. But that being the case, whatever human beings do, I can work with that.

Angry, Raucous, and Shamelessly Gorgeous

JUN 10 – JUL 12, 2026
GIL CATES THEATER

Written by Pearl Cleage
Directed by LaTanya Richardson Jackson
Produced in Association with Black Rebirth Collective
Featuring Denise Burse, Olivia Washington, Deborah Joy Winans & Charlayne Woodard

Anna Campbell is a trailblazing actress flush with accolades but short on cash. After returning to the U.S. to stage a career-defining comeback, she collides with a new generation that challenges her past, her politics, and her place in the movement. Award-winning playwright Pearl Cleage (Blues for an Alabama Sky) teams up with Tony Award nominee LaTanya Richardson Jackson (The Piano Lesson) to deliver a sharp-witted and soulful new comedy about art, activism, and aging on your own terms.

This production is made possible, in part, by support from Cast Iron Entertainment and the David Lee Foundation.

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