People often pose a question to writers that I never quite know how to answer. Where do you get your ideas from?

The truth is, I usually can’t pinpoint the exact moment when a flash of something leads to an understanding of something else that leads me to a story I didn’t know I was already writing. But every now and then, there is the realization that I need to grab a pen and write it all down as fast as I can before the idea disappears into the mist of imaginary lives. That’s how this play began 30 years ago with a trip from Montgomery, Alabama, back home to Atlanta. My husband and I had driven over for a performance at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival. The production was great. The audience was engaged and the post-show conversations were lively. As the program wound up, a young woman confided that she was really glad we had come since she thought we might cancel because of the Klan march.

“What Klan march,” I said.

“It’s King Day,” she said. “They march around the state capitol every year to protest the holiday. You don’t need to worry though. It’s so late, everybody’s probably gone home by now.”

An hour later, we were driving through the Alabama night. Trying not to be nervous, I opened the window and stuck my head out like a dog, loving the feel of the wind on my face. And then I saw the sky – vast and deeply blue and thick with more stars than you can ever see in the city. Wow, I thought, I wonder what it’s like to leave a place like this where you can step outside any night and see so much beauty it takes your breath away, and wind up in a place like 1930’s Harlem where the sky is so blocked by tall buildings and broken dreams that you never see the stars at all.

That’s where this play started. With me searching through my purse for a pencil and paper. Trying to capture those blues for a beautiful, Alabama sky.

- Pearl Cleage, Playwright
Blues for an Alabama Sky