Événement

For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf

FOR COLORED GIRLS is Shanges first work and most acclaimed theater piece. It consists of a series of poetic monologues accompanied by dance movements and music, a form Shange coined as the choreopoem. FOR COLORED GIRLS... tells the stories of seven women who have suffered oppression in a racist and sexist society.

As a choreopoem, the piece weaves interconnected stories of love, empowerment, struggle and loss into a complex representation of sisterhood. The cast consists of seven nameless African-American women only identified by the colors they are assigned. They are the lady in red, lady in orange, lady in yellow, lady in green, lady in blue, lady in brown, and lady in purple. Subjects from rape, abandonment, abortion and domestic violence are tackled.
FOR COLORED GIRLS made its Off-Broadway premiere at the Public Theater in June 1976. Three months later, in September, it was performed at the Booth Theater on Broadway, where it was continued until July 1978 and ran for 742 shows.

In 1982 the play was adapted for television on PBS station WNET-TV, as part of the American Playhouse.[ In 2010 Tyler Perry produced a movie adaptation of the play. The flims cast included Whoopi Goldberg, Janet Jackson and Phylicia Rashd.