FLYIN' WEST

Drama
Written By: Pearl Cleage
Directed by: John Pryor
Cast: Lela Elam, Carey Hart, Ian Lausell, Laverne Lewis, Chat Atkins, Carolyn Johnson

Synopsis:

"Pearl Cleage's Flyin' West is a real crowd pleaser and its characters have humor and vitality... Cleage is a natural-born storyteller..." Washington Post

"Flyin' West is the most potent, gripping play... a pacan to women... and a plea for all women with vibrant lives to tell their oral stories..." New York Times

Following the end of the Civil War, many former slaves, anxious to leave the South and the increasing disappointments and dangers of Reconstruction, took advantage of the Homestead Act and went West to build new lives for themselves and their families. Many of these homesteaders were black women who overcame tremendous odds to work their own land and make a place for themselves in an often harsh and forbidding environment. Set in 1898, Flyin' West is the story of some of these African-American female pioneers who settled, together in the all-black town Nocodemus, Kansas.