Can't wait.... For Colored Girls

I remember sitting in front of my television in '82 or '83 watching this "choreopoem" with utter amazement. I had read the book as a child. ( Yes, I said CHILD. I was always in my mother's book stash even at the age of 10).

"For colored girls...." originally began Off-Broadway at The Public Theater in May 1976, before transferring to Broadway on September 10, 1976. That production played the Booth Theatre for 876 performances and became the top-grossing dramatic play on Broadway that season. (Source)

Nothing has made such an impression on me as a young woman. This was the first time I witnessed the superior acting chops of Alfre Woodard and Lynn Whitfield. And if I'm not mistaken Patti LaBelle sung during one of the stories also. It was honest, personal, passionate, and eye-opening and I found myself in tears.

Performed by a cast of seven, "for colored girls..." is a series of prose poems and stories illuminating the identity of black women in America, as they reveal themselves, their lives, triumphs, hardships and ultimately their discovery of inner strength and love.

I finally found the DVD of the PBS performance on Amazon and can't wait to get it next week.

Whoopi Goldberg is bringing For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf back to Broadway and I will be there. India.Arie will make her Broadway debut in a new, re-envisioned production of Ntozake Shange's acclaimed stage play. Please,please, please, please let her do the role justice. Please LORD, let the other 6 women be real, honest to goodness actresses!!!