Playwright, novelist, essayist, and poet Pearl Cleage was born December 7, 1948 in Springfield, Massachusetts. Her father, Albert Cleage, was a minister and ran for governor of Michigan in 1962 on the Freedom Ticket, and her mother, Doris, was a schoolteacher. After high school, Cleage attended Howard University where she majored in playwriting. At twenty she left Howard and later graduated from Spelman College in 1971. Her early theater productions include Puppetplay, Hospice, Good News, and Essentials. Her recent novelWhat Looks Like Crazy On An Ordinary Day, is an Oprah's Book Club selection. Her most recent novel is Some Things I Never Thought I'd Do.

 

L-I-N-K-E-D: You're not only a novelist and poet, but a playwright as well. How do your creative processes differ for each genre? If possible, please explain each specific process.

CLEAGE: I am trained as a playwright. My degree is in drama, and while a student at Howard for three years I was in a B.F.A. program with a major in playwriting and dramatic literature. I have written thirteen plays. The thing I enjoy about theater is the immediacy of the experience. Writing is always a solitary activity, but once the play is written, the process becomes very collaborative. You have to work with actors, directors, designers, and technicians. Add to that the fact of a live audience every night. Fiction is not a collaborative experience. You write the book alone and people experience it alone when they read it. For me as a playwright, the absence of artistic collaborators was a big adjustment. As a playwright, I am not responsible for making you see the scene. The set designer does that. As a novelist, I have to paint the pictures with the words I pick. It's challenging and very different from the playwright's task.

L-I-N-K-E-D: What do you feel you achieve through writing novels and plays that you can't achieve through poetry or any other genre?

CLEAGE: I am interested in communicating with as many women as possible. My target audience of readers or theatergoers is always black women. We read a lot of novels. Many of us don't ever go to the theater, so I can reach more people with fiction than I can with plays, although I love the form. I also think columns and essays are an effective way to communicate with my sisters. I wrote a column for the Atlanta Tribune for ten years and found that people enjoyed my strong opinions and would feel free to share theirs with me at the grocery store or in the line at the post office. I think all forms of writing present different challenges. There is a small audience for poetry so I concentrated more on plays as a younger writer. I did publish one volume of poetry, "We Don't Need No Music" (Broadside Press, 1971).

L-I-N-K-E-D: Because plays are composed of so many perspectives, is voice more important in playwriting than in any other genre?

CLEAGE: I think voice is a critical element in all forms of creative writing. In fiction, the voice of the narrator is critical. With poetry, we are drawn into the experience by the poet's voice. I think with plays the voice of the writer is augmented by the voice and expression of the actor, but in the end, it is the writer's words that shape the piece and the writer's voice that brings it to life. As a playwright, I write my novels in first person because I am familiar with writing dialogue. The novels are almost like long monologues where the main character tells you her story.

L-I-N-K-E-D: In poetry and literature, imagery is restricted to the page and the imagination of the reader. How do you work with all the elements of craft, especially voice, imagery, and diction to make your characters real and tangible for your viewers? How do you utilize these elements so the viewers can grasp your interpretation?

CLEAGE: All the elements we have to use, as writers are a part of every project I undertake. Character, plot, voice—all these things must be used by the writer in service of the story. I never want my readers or audience members to be aware of the craft of the writing. I want them to believe in the characters I've created and take an emotional journey with them. I am always trying to get to people through the heart rather than the head!

L-I-N-K-E-D: How hard is it to continue using all the craft elements effectively when creating a play or a novel versus a poem, which is much shorter in length?

CLEAGE: I don't think the length of the piece determines the difficulty of the craft. A small poem is as difficult to write well as a full-length play. The elements are the same and the questions the writer must ask are the same. What am I talking about? Why is it important to me? Why should it be important to the reader/audience member?

L-I-N-K-E-D: Do you think that poetry, novels, and plays serve different purposes and if so, what are they?

CLEAGE: I think culture is always part of what defines and binds people as a community. I think that in times of war and transition like the one our country is currently traveling through with very little grace, creative writing can help us remember the most important things—What is family? What is love? What is courage? What defines a good woman or a good man? In my work, I always try to place my characters in the real world and let them confront the problems we all confront—love, work, politics, sex, aging, family. I think that as I continue to write and to grow as a human being, I am more and more aware that all people are struggling for the same things. We all want peace and safety and a place to fall in love and raise our families and grow old without having to be afraid of each other. I want my work to be part of that struggle.

L-I-N-K-E-D: What kind of style and form do you use to create your poetry (free verse, open form, traditional?) and does this reflect in the other genres you write in?

CLEAGE: I try to be sure that I pay as much attention to my craft as a writer as I do to my powers of observation as a human being. Just knowing a character is interesting doesn't mean you will be able to create a story to interest your readers unless you also understand how to plot a story. Having great dialogue won't sustain the play if there is no story in which to place the characters. All the genres I work in have their own demands, but the thing that unifies the work is my own worldview, my own desire to be a part of the worldwide struggle of people for peace and freedom. This is the energy that drives me to keep working even when it's difficult. I know the power of the written word. When you realize that writers are jailed around the world every day by those who fear the truth, you cannot help but recognize the power of words. I never forget it.