The Nacirema Society Requests the Honor of Your Presence at a Celebration of Their First One Hundred Years

by Pearl Cleage

Moderated by Thomas King

It’s 1964, ten years after the Montgomery bus boycott, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is planning a massive voter registration drive that promises to put the city back at the center of the Civil Rights Movement. Meanwhile the Nacirema Society prepares for its annual introduction of six elegant African-American debutantes to a world of prosperity, privilege and social responsibility. This centennial year, the Society’s grande dame, Grace Dunbar, will have nothing less than perfection for her granddaughter Gracie’s debut. Assisted by her lifelong friend, Catherine, who hopes the cotillion will prompt her grandson to propose to Grace’s granddaughter, the hope the cotillion will prompt Catherine’s grandson to propose to Grace’s granddaughter. And with young love brewing, old family skeletons rattling, national media attention abounding and a blackmail plot bubbling…what would dare go awry?

About the playwright 

Pearl Cleage

Pearl Cleage is Distinguished Artist in Residence at the Alliance Theatre. She serves as the city’s first Poet Laureate and is the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Dramatists Guild. Flyin’ West, Blues for an Alabama Sky, What I Learned in Paris, and Angry, Raucous and Shamelessly Gorgeous are among the plays she has premiered at the Alliance. She served as playwright to the Palefsky Collision Project for fourteen years and collaborated with her husband, writer Zaron W. Burnett, Jr., and artist Radcliffe Bailey on In My Granny’s Garden, a picture book for children that became an interactive theater piece for very young audiences. She is the author of eight novels, including What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day, an Oprah Book Club selection and New York Times bestseller. Cleage and Burnett were recently honored by Mayor Dickens who announced the new Pearl Cleage and Zaron W. Burnett Center for Culture and Creativity in Atlanta’s West End. Something Moving: A Meditation on Maynard grows out of Cleage’s active role in Jackson’s first campaign and her two years as a member of his administration. She is the mother of Deignan Lomax, and the proud grandmother of Michael, Chloe, Bailey, Averie and Ethan. 

About the moderator

TeKay is the Artistic Director, Theatre Manager and Program Coordinator of Theatre at Southwest Tennessee Community College as an Associate Professor in Communication and Theatre. TeKay has worked regularly as an actor/director/musician at Playhouse, Opera Memphis, Theatre Memphis, Hattiloo and Emerald Theatre. He has been involved with Read to Relate since its inception, having moderated Immediate Family, The Glass Menagerie, and Blues for Mr. Charlie. He was the assistant director on Of Mice and Men, directed Immediate Family and assisted on several choreography assignments at Theatre Memphis. TeKay serves on the Access, Belonging, and Community Committee and the Play Selection Committee for Theatre Memphis. TeKay has an MFA in Theatre from the University of Memphis, BA in Journalism and Mass Communications and an MA in Communication Studies/Performance from UNC-Chapel Hill. TeKay is a 3x Ostrander-nominated director and has won Best Ensemble awards for the play 5 Women Wearing the Same Dress at Southwest and the musical Ordinary Days at the UofM.