Blues for an Alabama Sky
By Pearl Cleage

The Characters
Angel Allen (Camille Locust)
Guy Jacobs (Javon Johnson)
Delia Patterson (Deneen Reynolds)
Sam Thomas (Mark Clayton Southers)
Leland Cunningham (Ronald Goode)

Dramaturg's Notes
In Blues for an Alabama Sky, Pearl Cleage dramatizes the lives of black men and women who struggle to gain access to the sparse opportunities in the early years of the Great Depression. Cleage refers to well known figures from the era, including Adam Clayton Powell, Sr., Langston Hughes, Josephine Baker, Margaret Sanger and Bruce Nugent, but the playwright is obviously concerned with the impact of the Depression on a community of "ordinary folk" like Angel, Guy, Sam, Delia and Leland. These complex characters are the voices of discourse. As they move around Harlem during the summer of 1930, they address homophobia, birth control, national and international escape, and secular and spiritual activism.

Cleage constructs narratives that are filled with rich layers and rhythms. Pay careful attention to the ways in which this black female playwright tells a story -- not only through dialogue, but also through the setting and the costumes. And, while it is significant that you feel the characters moving around Harlem, don't ignore the pieces of their past that inform these characters' ways of knowing, their ways of being. Through characters like Angel we know that black folks don't merely sing the blues. We also know that blues continues to tell the story of black people suffering and attempting to gasp for air in both the South and the North.