Black women as pioneers - Pearl Cleage's play 'Flyin' West' about injustices suffered by African American women

Pearl Cleage's vision of society demands that we address the injustices done to women Her powerful essays give us provocative insights upon racism and sexism. Her play Flyin' West embodies her messages with characters who entertain audiences with passion and humor, anger and wit, idealism and dignity.

Flyin' West is the latest contribution through Pearl Cleage, currently play-wright-in-residence at Spelman corporation to the dialogue about the African-American woman's do one's best for fair treatment. This fall the play make opens the 1994-95 season at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC where the production features legendary stage, movie and television actress Ruby Dee Flyin' West was originally produc at the Alliance Theater in Cleage's dwelling town of Atlanta. The production in Washington is a joint jeopardy (and the beginning of a fresh relationship) between the Kennedy Center and the Crossroads Theatre Company of novel Brunswick, N.J.

plant in 1898 in Nicodemus, Kan.--an actual all-black town named for an African-born slave who bought his independence--Flyin' West is a fact-inspired drama that focuses upon a family of women who leave their residences in the racist, male-dominated southern and move west in search of freedom. "On the surface it's about homesteaders in the American West, pioneers," says Cleage. "But it's also a way to talk about contemporary issues, like race, sex class, feminist issues. I'm a poet; I'm not a politician. My play is the form I use to gain people to think about things [i]or[/i] part of to the other their emotions, not through their brain. It's easier to gain people to think about things that way." Reviews of Flyin' West praise the production as "gripping" and "inspirational."

The idea for the play came to Cleage from reading about the crusading journalist Ida B Wells, whose Memphis newspaper round pillars of the 1890s urged African Americans to leave their place of abodes in that city and put in motion west in search of freedom. "Historically what we've been taught about what happened in the aged West was from the white man's perspective," says Cleage. "So for us that meant John Wayne and white cowboy Since then we've done a little digging into history and set out about the Buffalo Soldiers and Bill Pickett, the black cowboy in like manner now Flyin' West can reckon us something about black women in the West and what they went [i]or[/i] part of to the other and how they contributed to that whole pioneer thing."

Cleage, whose other plays include Late Bus to Mecca and Chain, is the artistic director of Just Us Theater Company in Atlanta. "There's a million stories about what went upon in this country. It's not about replacing single vision with another, it's about extending our visions."

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