for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf on Broadway Tickets

Ntozake Shange’s landmark choreopoem is having a homecoming Broadway revival. for colored girls makes its first Broadway revival in the same theatre that the original production called home. for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf tickets are on sale now. Get for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf Broadway tickets on TodayTix.

for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf is a show that defies convention. Shange’s work features seven Black women, each named only for the color of her costume. They perform a total of 22 poems, bolstered by movement and music, about their experiences of Black womanhood. More specifically, Shange’s characters share stories of love and sisterhood as well as abuse and racism. The women’s stories emphasize their survival in a society that has mistreated them as they have grown up. The women use vernacular language to mimic how real women speak, though with Shange’s unorthodox poetic rhythms.

Shange’s journey with the for colored girls play began in California, where she workshopped it with Paula Moss. The two then moved to New York in the hopes of producing the show downtown, and sure enough, for colored girls made its professional premiere in 1975 at Studio Rivbea. The show played three more venues between 1975 and 1976, and its fast-rising popularity landed it at The Public Theater in 1976. That production then transferred to Broadway, where it ran to acclaim for almost two years and received a Tony Award nomination for Best Play.

for colored girls was also adapted for television on PBS in 1982. In 2009, Tyler Perry created a film adaptation titled For Colored Girls starring Loretta Devine, Kimberly Elise, Whoopi Goldberg, Janet Jackson, Phylicia Rashad, Anika Noni Rose, Kerry Washington, and Thandie Newton.

Get tickets to for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf in New York on TodayTix.

What to Watch For

• Shange coined the term “choreopoem” when she created for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf. A choreopoem is a type of show that combines music, dance, poetry, and song. Unlike traditional musicals, choreopoems are meant to elicit an emotional response rather than tell a linear story. for colored girls, for one, was originally written as separate poems, and each of the stories are still performed as separate vignettes within the piece.
• The Off-Broadway and Broadway productions of for colored girls in the 1970s went up at The Public Theater and the Booth Theatre, respectively. Now, after returning to the Public in 2019, the show is returning to the Booth for its Broadway revival.
• Before for colored girls was produced professionally in New York, Ntozake Shange first performed the show with four other women at a women’s bar called the Bacchanal near Berkeley, California. After the Broadway run, that sounds like a great site-specific revival!
• In a 2009 CNN interview, Shange shared how she came up with the title of the play. “I was driving the No. 1 Highway in northern California and I was overcome by the appearance of two parallel rainbows. I had a feeling of near death or near catastrophe. Then I drove through the rainbow and I went away. Then I put that together to form the title.” That’s also why each woman in the play is named after a color of the rainbow.
• In addition to choreographing, Camille A. Brown makes her Broadway directorial debut with the show. She’s choreographed Choir Boy (earning a Tony nomination) and Once on This Island on Broadway, and she just co-directed Fire Shut Up in My Bones at the Metropolitan Opera, the first opera by a Black composer to play there.
• Please note, this production contains frank discussions of physical, verbal, sexual, and child abuse.