In Ntozake Shange's powerful mid-'70s "choreo-poem," a group of African-Americans dramatizes the struggles and journey toward self respect experienced by black women in America.
This revival of 'for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf' is one link in a chain of productions re-introducing the work of our titans - Alice Childress, Adrienne Kennedy and more - to modern audiences. Only Shange's work has been on Broadway before, first premiering at the Booth Theatre, where the revival is currently playing, in 1976. It remains a seminal, sacred text; one I've been able to recite phrases from for the better half of my life. This revival, by director and choreographer Camille A. Brown, is the most essential production of Shange's masterwork to date.
Director and choreographer Camille A. Brown and her cast of seven female singer-dancer-actors breathe life and vitality into Ntozake Shange's still-potent mid-1970s touchstone for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf. Opening tonight at the Booth Theatre on Broadway, Shange's fantasia of poetry, dance and stories of confession, defiance, sisterhood and, above all, perseverance, holds a power that's not been weakened either by decades or the loss of a once startling newness.
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