About the Play:

Angry, Raucous, and Shamelessly Gorgeous is a full-length drama by Pearl Cleage. Anna Campbell is a trailblazing actress flush with accolades but short on cash. After returning to the U.S. to stage a career-defining comeback, she collides with a new generation that challenges her past, her politics, and her place in the movement. Angry, Raucous, and Shamelessly Gorgeous is a sharp-witted and soulful comedy about art, activism, and aging on your own terms.

Angry, Raucous, and Shamelessly Gorgeous is about a seasoned actress who, while launching a comeback, finds herself clashing a new generation of artists and activists. Anna Campbell shook the theater world decades ago with a radical performance of monologues from August Wilson's Fences, which came to be known forever as Naked Wilson. It made her a legend – and a pariah. Now, after years in self-imposed exile, she’s back and ready to reclaim her legacy. But instead of the triumphant return she imagined, she finds Pete Watson, a highly ambitious younger actress with an adult entertainment background, preparing to step into Anna’s most famous role. Angry, Raucous, and Shamelessly Gorgeous dives into how friction between generations can lead to a surprising amount of humor and grace, the evolution of feminism, and the art of knowing when to fight for your place and when to pave the way for the next generation.

Angry, Raucous, and Shamelessly Gorgeous premiered in 2019 at Alliance Theatre in Atlanta and played to sold out audiences as part of the celebration of the 75th Anniversary of the Spelman College drama department. Pearl Cleage earned her undergraduate degree in theatre there. Since then the play has been produced widely in high school and college theatre productions as a showcase of student talent.

Cast: 4 female

What people say:

"[Angry, Raucous, And Shamelessly Gorgeous] is glorious. …[Cleage] writes characters that pop off the page and seemingly spring to life fully formed. Her women are multi-dimensional, likable even when not being very likable, filled with a full palette of reaction, emotion, and idiosyncrasy. …[The play] is a beautifully realized piece, a script that celebrates the joys and heartbreaks of a life in the theatre, and a brilliant homage to mentoring, to passing the torch, to allowing a legacy [to] have a life of its own, to having the courage to say to the young one who replaces you, ‘I hear you! I love you! Godspeed!." — Theatre Buzz Atlanta

"[Cleage] continues to dazzle us… [Angry, Raucous, And Shamelessly Gorgeous] was AMAZING." — Atlanta Journal-Constitution

About the Playwright:

Pearl Cleage is a celebrated African American playwright, novelist, poet and political activist, and was one of the first Black women in America to achieve national recognition as a dramatist. Her plays, also including Flyin' West and Bourbon at the Border, provide a remarkable and penetrating look at the African-American experience over the last century.