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

October 8th, 2019- November 17th, 2019
Martinson Theater

A groundbreaking work in modern American theater, FOR COLORED GIRLS WHO HAVE CONSIDERED SUICIDE/WHEN THE RAINBOW IS ENUF, returns to The Public for the first time since it premiered in 1976, before its breakthrough run on Broadway.

Filled with passion, humor, and raw honesty, legendary playwright/poet Ntozake Shange’s form-changing choreopoem tells the stories of seven women of color using poetry, song, and movement. With unflinching honesty and emotion, each woman voices her survival story of having to exist in a world shaped by sexism and racism.

Choreography Team:
Associate Choreographer: Chloe Davis
Assistant Choreographers: Mora-Amina Parker and Ja’Malik

PRESS

“Brown’s contribution to For Colored Girls continues this tradition, bringing Blackness to the main stage. Brown’s percussive gestures require actresses to use their bodies, the floor, and each other to keep time as they pivot from one poem to the next.”
- Zora Medium

“Brown does not provide the performers with choreography. Instead, she provides the players with options, new ways to deliver the spoken word that requires them to be deeply connected to their bodies. The goal is for each cast member to be themselves while also performing and moving.”
- Zora Medium

“It’s a connection that Shange recognized. Before her death, Shange interviewed Ms. Brown for a book she was writing about dance. (“I should be interviewing you,” Ms. Brown recalls thinking.) Planning the “For Colored Girls” revival, she told Ms. Gardiner that Ms. Brown was her choice for choreographer.”
- The New York Times

“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”
-New York Stage Review

“Choreography by Camille A. Brown (Choir Boy) turns the swirling of hips, thrusting of limbs, and smacking of butts and thighs into a kind of animated hieroglyphics of black female experience.”
- Time Out New York

“the women dance together in Camille A. Brown’s ecstatic choreography, and you watch them holding each other up.”
- New York Magazine

“Camille A. Brown's choreography for this production speaks to both, fortifying the molecular connections between each of the women onstage while bridging the gap between traditional African-American social dance and modern hip-hop.”
- Theater Mania

“The celebration is most definitely in Camille A. Brown’s exuberant choreography and the stunning performance of it by the incredibly talented and unselfconscious cast.”
- New York Theater Guide

“Camille A. Brown’s choreography draws as much attention to bodies as it does to voices—dance numbers are not sideshows but, rather, attempts at articulation. There’s a humility through gesture, an acknowledgment that literature eventually runs up against the limits of language. And speech—even the clear kind that knows exactly what it means—isn’t achieved on its own...”
- The New Yorker