Legacy playwright Pearl Cleage premiers ‘Something’s Moving: A Meditation on Maynard’ at Ford’s Theatre

By Deborah Bailey, AFRO Contributing Editor, Dbailey@afro.com

Ford’s Theatre is bringing in its 2023 fall season with a world premiere from extensively acclaimed creator, poet and playwright Pearl Cleage. “One thing Shifting: A Meditation on Maynard” will likely be carried out on stage by Oct. 15. 

Cleage was commissioned by Ford’s Theatre to placed on the present as a part of Ford’s Theatre Legacy Commissions Initiative. She is the primary Legacy Commissions playwright to obtain full manufacturing. Cleage accomplished the workshop with the theater in February of this 12 months and had her opening evening on Sept. 22. This system supplies a possibility for Ford’s Theatre to interact Black, and different ethnic playwrights of coloration because the theater re-imagines its legacy– past being the placement the place President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.  

“It is a play about unusual folks doing one thing extraordinary,” stated Seema Sueko, director.  Sueko labored intently with Cleage to take the play from the web page to the stage.   

The play is concentrated on Maynard Jackson who was born on March 23,1938 in Dallas and died on June 23,2003 in Arlington, Va. Jackson served as the primary Black Mayor of Atlanta from 1974 to 1982 and once more from 1990 to 1994, in keeping with Britannica. However make no mistake, the play isn’t a nostalgic reflection of the previous.

Cleage’s play is about in Atlanta and explores the ideas of present residents. The size of town’s multi-ethnic inhabitants are on full show, as day-after-day residents mirror on Jackson’s election as the primary Black mayor of the quickest rising metropolitan space within the South. The work supplies some extent of reference and options the more and more multi-ethnic range of American cities immediately. 

“I wished to have a look at that second as a time when many various communities in Atlanta got here collectively in a means they by no means had earlier than to elect this man all of us felt was completely the precise individual to steer us,” Cleage stated.

The script contains younger Latin, Asian, East Indian and American Indian voices , along with others, who weren’t thought of on the time of Jackson’s election.  She explores race, class, sexual orientation and gender points current throughout Jackson’s lifetime  –  and people who persist immediately. 

The actors communicate their reality about considerations Jackson addressed in addition to new points which have pierced the general public coverage panorama since his days in workplace together with immigration, the deepening housing disaster and incidents of overt racial discrimination impacting the Asian American neighborhood. 

Sheldon Epps, senior inventive director at Ford’s Theatre, stated the play is about America. 

“I’m very pleased with the truth that it has grow to be a play about America and never simply Atlanta,” Epps stated at a put up present dialogue that adopted the opening evening manufacturing.

Epps, former inventive director at Pasadena Playhouse, was first invited to Ford’s Theatre in 2019 because the historic playhouse sought to remodel its picture and herald theater depicting extra various themes and voices. 

The play’s message resonated otherwise with every particular person who attended the night’s efficiency.  Dominique Torres, who lives in Maryland and teaches in Alexandria, Va. got here to opening evening to preview the play for her college students, who she is going to convey subsequent week. Torres stated the play will allow them to know their voices and observations of life’s occasions matter.  

“Everybody has a narrative. We grow to be nearer by sharing our tales,” Torres stated.

Su Rae Stewart of Maryland stated the play took her again to the environment in America after President Barack Obama’s first election in 2008. 

“I used to be within the navy and got here again for Obama’s election,” stated Stewart, who lives in Maryland, however was stationed in Alaska on the time of Obama’s first election.  

“The sentiments expressed by the actors within the play  after Maynard Jackson’s election as mayor had been the identical emotions in America after Obama was elected. There was pleasure but additionally resentment,” Stewart mirrored.

“After Obama was elected, some folks thought we had been coming after them. However all we ever wished was equality, not revenge,” Stewart stated, a theme mirrored within the play.   

 Epps affirmed the big selection of reactions.  

“A play is meant to evoke a variety of sentiments and feelings from our viewers. That’s our job.”