If there’s a better marriage of play and choreographer than For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf—Ntozake Shange’s self-described choreopoem—and Camille A. Brown, I can’t even conceive of it.
For Colored Girls…, a portrait of seven women of color (or seven facets of a single woman?), demands constant, vibrant, versatile motion. In the past few months alone, Brown—who also has her own company, Camille A. Brown & Dancers—has created choreography for Porgy and Bess at the Metropolitan Opera, the baseball-themed play Toni Stone, and Shakespeare in the Park’s Much Ado About Nothing; her work, which also includes Tarell Alvin McCraney’s spiritual-infused Choir Boy (for which she received a 2019 Tony nomination), is astonishingly rich and varied.
And in Shange’s play, each woman—sometimes each poem—demands its own style of dance. Take, for instance, Lady in Purple (Deaf West Theatre alum Alexandria Wailes) and the story of rouge-cheeked bayou-dwelling seductress Sechita: “she gathered her sparsely sequined skirts/ tugged the waist cincher from under her greyin slips/ n made her face immobile/ she made her face like nefertiti/ approachin her own tomb/ she suddenly threw/ her leg full-force/ thru the canvas curtain/ a deceptive glass stone/ sparkled/ malignant on her ankle/ her calf waz tauntin in the brazen carnie lights/ the full moon/ sechita/ goddess/ of love…” The piece—an incredible fusion of sign language and beautifully fluid moves (Wailes’ lines are stunning)—becomes a ballet in itself.
[Read David Finkle’s ★★★★★ review here.]
Sechita’s story might sound remote, but many of Shange’s other pieces are eerily, achingly familiar. “i usedta live in the world/ then i moved to HARLEM,” begins Lady in Blue (Sasha Allen) in perhaps the play’s most famous monologue, talking about the emotional armor she dons—the defenses that so many women put up every day—just to walk down the street: “i usedta live in the world/ really be in the world/ free & sweet talkin/ good mornin & thank-you & nice day/ uh huh/ i cant now/ i cant be nice to nobody.” Lady in Green (Okwui Okpokwasili) recalls the time that “somebody almost walked off wid alla my stuff”; of course, “waz a man faster n my innocence/ waz a lover/ i made too much room for.” Sighs of understanding ripple through the theater.
The most wrenching tale—the violent saga of Crystal, her babies, and Beau Willie Brown—certainly belongs to Lady in Red (Jayme Lawson); it also qualifies as perhaps the only part of Shange’s play that translated well to Tyler Perry’s 2010 film version, where he attempted to connect all the monologues into something resembling a narrative. But For Colored Girls’ most stirring moments are its most celebratory: “my love is too delicate to have thrown back on my face,” says Lady in Yellow (Adrienne C. Moore). Echoes Lady in Brown (Celia Chevalier): “my love is too beautiful to have thrown back on my face.” And so on. “Delicate.” “Beautiful.” “Sanctified.” “Magic.” “Saturday nite.” “Complicated.” “Music.” Speaking of music—cue the music. And the dancing—which is delicate, beautiful…and magic.
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf opened Oct. 22, 2019, and runs through Dec. 8 at the Public Theater. Tickets and information: publictheater.org
