We Speak

Peggy Douglas, Ph.D. is an oral historian, college professor, playwright, performance poet, and musician with various string bands in Chattanooga, TN. Her poems and plays are borne out of oral history interviews with people from marginalized communities. Douglas is an introspective monologuist and her self-described playwrighting genre is "theater of personality." Peggy has listened to hundreds of people over the years who persevered through difficult circumstances, and she shapes their disparate voices into a collection of poetic monologues, which she then reproduces onstage.Peggy learned the art of liberatory oral history and storytelling from mentors at the Highlander Folk School in New Market, TN, where they collected stories from Appalachian voices seldom heard, like former miners, millworkers and unsung heroes in social change movements. In 2022, Peggy received the 2022 Tennessee Arts Commission's Individual Artist Fellowship Award for Playwrighting.Her production company, Southern Exposure is the outreach program for Obvious Dad, a professional theater company based in Chattanooga.