E. (Emily) Claudette Freeman

Augusta Savage, affectionally known as Gussie to her family, is known for her work during the Harlem Renaissance as a sculptor, art teacher, and community art program director. Savage was also politically and socially active. The seventh of fourteen children, she faces the severe scorn of her father, a pastor and staunch fundamentalist who considered Savage’s toying with graven images to the influence of the devil. Eclectic and mysterious, Savage’s multiple husbands, a questionable relationship with a lunatic poet, and questions surrounding a child not acknowledged and battles to make her mark as a Black woman in arts schools and circles – made her an enigma.
Spurred by interest in her by the Community Relations Board of West Palm Beach, Florida, a city in which Savage lived with her family briefly, E. Claudette Freeman found herself once again drawn into Savage’s story. Initially introduced to work when she collaborated on a biographical script about Mary McLeod Bethune, Zora Neale Hurston and introducing Savage, Freeman found her to be familiar and reminiscent of many Black female creatives – misunderstood, scorned by love, rejected by far of their greatness and longing for their rightful place in the world.
Unveiling Gussie is written as a one-woman allowing Gussie to tell Augusta’s story in her words through newspaper accounts, penned letters, and her own editorial commentaries. Offscreen voices are infused to heighten moments and allow character wardrobe adjustments. Those offscreen, at director’s discretion may become physical characters. The actress must be able to distinguish when Augusta is talking to others.

There is - without doubt - something powerful in the dynamics of the mother and daughter relationship. Yet, there are times when those dynamics create fireworks one minute and missed invitations for healing in the next.

Jamie is an only child who left the confines of her strong mother, and a small town to build the life of her dreams. Bessie, her mother, is a stubborn, determined, and unflinching in her beliefs woman who battles internally with how to properly display her emotions. When the two come face-to-face after being apart for years, what ensues is a battle with selves and each other. What remains to be seen is will love show up in a way that will resolve the wide swatch of pain between them. The show is a powerful conversation piece about how we show our children love, and how our children perceive the way we love them. It enjoyed a successful show in the Women's Theatre Festival of Memphis in 2016.

Chosen for the Staged Reading Category in the 2020 Atlanta Black Theatre Festival, PEEING IN A SODA BOTTLE, celebrates old Southern woman wisdom and front porch storytelling, while conveying intricate life insight through a character with regret, hurt, her definition of faith, strength, and an under current of compassion for others. She is a high-yellow, moonshine drinking, cussing woman who some disregard because she is. The piece is about respecting elders, hard truths and our stories through the lens of certain types of people that many of us disregard.

This third-place winner in the 1995 Loften Mitchell Playwrights Festival is an emotional story of the relationship between an aging father and his three children. As an evening of family time unfolds, so do the unresolved issues of childhood, the battle of acceptance and understanding between two brothers, and the definition of their roles in their father’s life. Wonderfully flavored with Southern wit and storytelling, the presence of a father in his children's lives comes full circle, when death visits their family.

THE SLUMBER PARTY is the story of five friends. As children, they experienced first loves, heart breaks, the changes of life together. They endured family struggles, bouts with racism, the joy of one's pregnancy and then separation. Years later, they gather again, at the request of Daniella Reed for a slumber party. An evening of memories and childhood antics, turns into a night of skeletons bearing rude awakenings, realizations, revelations and tests of friendship and who we become in our beliefs and understanding as women.