‘For Colored Girls’ Stars Talk Broadway Revival: ‘One Can’t Help But to Be Proud of Being a Black Woman on Stage’
Michael Appler On September 15, 1976, Ntozake Shange’s “for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf” opened at the Booth Theatre, forever reshaping the form and feel of American theatre. On Wednesday evening in New York City, “for colored girls” returned to the Booth Theatre for its first exuberant revival on Broadway.Then, “for colored girls,” a collection of poetic monologues, set the Broadway stage for Black women to speak and introduced a theatrical form made for its telling: The “choreopoem,” a device of Shange’s invention, bent the conventions of spoken word, poetry and dance to the needs of Black women.