Theatre • Development • Licensing • Adaptation
Theatre • Development • Licensing • Adaptation
Black lives.
Family rooms.
Church pews.
Front porches.
Black lives.
Family rooms.
Church pews.
Front porches.
Emily Claudette Freeman writes plays and screen work that listen closely to family, faith, memory, silence, grief, humor, survival, inheritance, and the complicated ways people try to become whole.
For theatres, universities, festivals, and producers
Truth with somewhere to stand.
For producing directors, artistic directors, and development partners
For producing directors, artistic directors, and development partners
Let's talk about readings, productions,
licensing, development, commissions,
and adaptation conversations.
Let's talk about readings, productions,
licensing, development, commissions,
and adaptation conversations.
Theatre companies, universities, festivals, producers, and development partners
are invited to inquire about Claudette's existing work. Every piece is ready to be met by the room
it was written for.
The plays and screen work
The plays and screen work
The body of work
The body of work
Selected development + production history
Where the work has lived
Where the work has lived
Heritage Ensemble Theatre Company
Heritage Ensemble Theatre Company
National Black Theatre Festival Readers Series
Quest Theatre’s Loften Mitchell New Playwrights’ Festival
Women’s Theatre Festival of Memphis
Chattanooga Black Arts and Ideas Festival
University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Miami Sports & Exhibition Authority
What happens after the wound is named
What happens after the wound is named
Claudette is drawn to characters standing at the edge of truth: women reclaiming pieces of themselves, families negotiating silence and inheritance, fathers and daughters wrestling with absence, communities remembering what history tried to bury, and souls trying to make peace with God, love, memory, and themselves.
Her work is interested in what happens after the wound is named, when people still have to decide how they will live
Selected play teasers
A closer look at a few works
A closer look at a few works
Peeing In a Soda Bottle
A one-woman work built around Chayonne, an older woman whose rough edges, unfiltered language, pain, joy, faith, wisdom, regret, and front-porch way of seeing the world force the audience to decide whether wisdom is still wisdom when it arrives in packaging society has learned to dismiss.
Remembering Papa
A family gathers around memory, laughter, resentment, longing, disconnect, and the complicated emotional inheritance left by a father. The play allows affection and ache to occupy the same room.
The Way My Mama Loves Me
A mother-daughter story about love, conflict, forgiveness, history, and the sometimes bruising ways family members try to give and receive the love they understand.
And Daddy Came Home
Inspired by a radio conversation about absentee Black fathers who later return, the work asks a difficult question: when a father comes home, do the children he left behind still want what he has returned to offer?
Remembering Papa
A biographical theatrical work centered on Augusta Savage, the Harlem Renaissance sculptor, teacher, arts leader, and Black woman artist whose creative calling existed alongside family conflict, public struggle, and the cost of being misunderstood.
The Way My Mama Loves Me
A mother-daughter story about love, conflict, forgiveness, history, and the sometimes bruising ways family members try to give and receive the love they understand.
Production inquiry
Ready to bring one of these
works into a room?
Ready to bring one of these
works into a room?
Share what you are producing, developing, licensing, or dreaming up
. Claudette and her team will respond with next steps, available materials,
and possibilities for collaboration.
Emily Claudette Freeman
Author • Playwright • Speaker • Facilitator • Keeper of Sacred Stories
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© 2026 Emily Claudette Freeman. All rights reserved.
Words that live, dance, move, inspire, and transform.