Reviving shange's "photograph" at Theatre 80 St. Marks

Above: Imana Breaux plays dancer Michael in a photograph/lovers in motion.
Below: Michael bursts into the mysterious life of photographer Sean,
portrayed by Adrain Washington.
(photos: Jonathan Slaff)

a photograph/lovers in motion
The Negro Ensemble Company
Theatre 80 St. Marks
February 5-19

The late ntozake shange's a photograph/lovers in motion--staged by The Public Theater in 1977--now reappears at nearby Theater 80 St. Marks, adapted and directed by shange's writer sister ifa bayeza in a Negro Ensemble Company production. A luminous revival of shange's better-known for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf (1976) recently concluded its critically-acclaimed return to The Public, renewing interest in the life and oeuvre of the influential Black feminist playwright. Fans of for colored girls--and we are legion--should be wowed by a photograph's lead actress, Imana Breaux. Her vivacious turn as the dancer Michael, a free-spirited little powerhouse, rips open the show, and Breaux owns most of her scenes like a cross between Beyoncé, whom she resembles, and shange herself.

Although there's a wealth of dancerly-ness (from Breaux) and some actual dancing by other players, I wouldn't call a photograph a choreopoem in the captivating way that for colored girls is. But shange was not only a fierce writer but an exuberant dancer, and she's all over Breaux's performance with her multicolored fringes, her red suede boots, her fiery Mohawk, her hobo bag and her jazzy speech rhythms. Would that this gifted actress could have prevailed and not been subsumed by the strangely-shaped story and direction.

Michael--something brisk and cool about this male-identified, archangelic name given to shange's sexy sprite--takes up with photographer/Vietnam vet Sean (Adrain Washington) whose aspirational bravado, it turns out, fails to track with his actual professional accomplishments. Although Michael quickly falls for this strapping guy, and he for her, things seem more than a little off when Sean's photographic preoccupations and history of womanizing come to light. Three other characters complicate matters further over an unnecessarily drawn-out evening: a two-hour first act, an intermission and a second act that, although it is only about a half-hour, also seems endless and graceless. for colored girls... did not prepare me for this. I would not have expected shange to write a straight-out soap opera, let alone one filled with artificial characters who fail to inspire our concern and care. Along with Breaux, there is one performer I'd be eager to see again. Marc Deliz (as Sean's long-suffering gay friend Earl) gives an fully embodied, grounded, nuanced, quietly shining performance before events overtake his efforts as well.

I'm mindful that, for all the well-deserved love shange received when she gave us for colored girls..., she also caught hell from some folks who took her uncompromising Black feminism as a slam against Black men. Nonsense, of course. But a photograph, with its depiction of Sean (among other stereotyped characters) could be ready evidence for the haters.

Historic Theatre 80 St. Marks is tiny, and its humble intimacy can be a strength for the right show--bringing an audience close to performers in a "we're all in this together" atmosphere. That's a great opportunity that a photograph/lovers in motion is simply not able to seize.

Cast: Imana Breaux; Adrain Washington; Marc Deliz; Nya Bowman (Nevada); Mystie Galloway (Claire)

Music: David Murray
Set: Chris Cumberbatch
Lighting: Melody A. Beal
Costumes: Katherine Roberson
Choreography: Leslie Dockery

a photograph/lovers in motion continues through February 29. For information and tickets, click here.

Theatre 80 St. Marks
80 St. Marks Place (between 1st and 2nd Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

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For Colored Girls...yesterday, today, tomorrow

Cast of the 2019 production of Ntozake Shange's
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When The Rainbow Is Enuf
at The Public Theater
(photo: Joan Marcus)

For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When The Rainbow Is Enuf

The Public Theater

October 19, 2019

When, in the mid-1970s, I first saw Ntozake Shange’s Black feminist choreopoem For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When The Rainbow Is Enuf--back then, if I recall, all the letters in that title were still stylishly lower-cased--my Greek-American boyfriend emerged from the theater in a state of shock and horror. As for me--a colored Caribbean-American girl for whom the queer rainbow was yet to be enough--I relished the sheer moxie of it.

As it happened, one of my editors had already given the boyfriend a look-over and quickly summed him up as “not mature enough for you,” but it took me a bit longer to figure that out for myself.

That Shange, though. In For Colored Girls, she had handed me a clue. She handed so many of us a clue.

She had dreamed forth seven women who, through experiences of pleasure and of struggle, figured things out for themselves. Adorned in a rainbow of colors--each in blue, brown, orange, red, yellow, green or purple--her “colored girls” burst into the consciousness of early 1970s New York and proceeded to spin a web of influence in the theatrical arts that has never come to an end. I have since seen Shange’s aesthetics reflected in performers and choreographers I dearly love like Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Maria Bauman, Andrea E. Woods Valdés, Sydnie L. Mosley, Camille A. Brown and countless other dance, performance and spoken word artists.

Shange’s choreopoem first hit city bars, then The Public Theater for its formal premiere, then Broadway and then--maybe for worse rather than better--television and film. Now in 2019, welcomed back to The Public--under graceful direction by Leah C. Gardiner and with Camille A. Brown’s vivacious and accessible choreography--these legendary "colored girls" inhabit a small, intimate set-up encircled by audience seating. Gardiner and Brown's fantastic ensemble includes Sasha Allen (Lady in Blue), Celia Chevalier (Lady in Brown), Danaya Esperanza (Lady in Orange), Jayme Lawson (Lady in Red), Adrienne C. Moore (Lady in Yellow), Okwui Okpokwasili (Lady in Green) and Alexandria Wailes (Lady in Purple).

At center: Alexandria Wailes (Lady in Purple)
(photo: Joan Marcus)

Okwui Okpokwasili (Lady in Green)
(photo: Joan Marcus)

With every finger snap, every hand clap, every stomp, every swirl, every satisfied press and slip of hands against their own bodies, Shange’s characters insist that attention finally be paid to Black women marginalized and endangered by racism and patriarchy. Because they have learned to pay attention to themselves. Know themselves. Enjoy themselves. Famously, find god in themselves. They speak the truths life has taught them.

Choreography connects the cast through a percolating, expandable cypher that protects childlike play--the inevitable “Little Sally Walker” clapping game--the embodied relaying of amusing, sexy or harrowing stories and the communal, compassionate laying on of healing hands. Movement turns poetic text vividly three-dimensional; through physical expression, memories become all the more shareable with an audience willing to be moved. Bring tissues. I needed a few.

Scenic design and lighting create an atmosphere of permission (the disco balls at first retracted above the stage), a space for sensory indulgence (those clustered hangings of abstract stalactites rotating through lights of deep colors). Original compositions by American Roots and soul artist Martha Redbone and hits from generations past--”Dancing in the Streets,” “Stay in My Corner”--underscore and heighten the narratives’ driving intensity.

Sasha Allen, an exciting singer,
portrays Shange's Lady in Blue.
(photo: Joan Marcus)

It's time to discover--or rediscover--the joy and potency of For Color Girls. Go and discover Wailes, a deaf actor and dancer of eloquent charm and fluidity who absolutely dazzles. Rediscover Okpokwasili, a star of contemporary dance and performance, whose trenchant, urgent presentation of one of Shange's most famous soliloquies reminds us--us colored girls, at least--that there's still always going to be someone new trying to walk off wid alla our stuff.

Scenic design: Myung Hee Cho

Costume design: Toni-Leslie James

Lighting design: Jiyoun Chang

Sound design: Megumi Katayama

Understudy: D. Woods

Director of American Sign Language: Onudeah Nicolarakis

For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When The Rainbow Is Enuf has been extended through Sunday, December 8. For information and tickets, click here.

The Public Theater

425 Lafayette Street (at Astor Place), Manhattan

(directions)

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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

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40th anniversary of "For Colored Girls..." celebrated in Harlem

Schomburg Center Plans Exhibition on ‘For Colored Girls’
by Felicia R. Lee, The New York Times, September 8, 2014

Welcome to Ntozake Shange's worlds

The Worlds of Shange

presented by

Barnard Center for Research on Women

February 14-15

Performing Shange
Thursday, February 14 (6-8pm)
Free and open to the public
Event Oval, The Diana Center, Barnard College

a conversation between Obie-award winning playwright and poet Ntozake Shange and dance artist Dianne McIntyre followed by student performances of Shange's work

Worlds of Shange
A conference
Friday, February 15 (10am-6pm)
Free and open to the public
Event Oval, The Diana Center, Barnard College

Featured speakers include scholars and artists shaping scholarly and popular conversations about African-American arts and letters as well as gender in the African Diaspora.

For complete details on this and other programs of the Barnard Center for Research on Women (Barnard College), click here.

Rays of light

My body is a halfway house for a ray of light. -- Marc Bamuthi Joseph

Last evening, 651 Arts brought together the fabulous Ntozake Shange and Marc Bamuthi Joseph--"fabulous" modifies both of them, thank you--for a conversation that could have, should have gone on all night. From the outset--with Joseph explaining that his middle name means "of the trees" and Shange acknowledging that "trees carry spirits"--everyone could feel that these two charming, multi-talented, politically astute artists ride the same wavelength and have much to share. I'm still buoyed and buzzing from this one-time-only, one-of-a-kind, event, which took place before a full and fully mesmerized audience at the Mark Morris Dance Center as part of 651 Arts' Live & Outspoken series.

 

Joseph opened by offering excerpts from Word Becomes Flesh, a solo that takes the familiar concept of spoken word and pumps it up into super-embodied word--a steady roll of movement, narrative and allegorical characterization treating historical and societal realities. Later, as Shange interviewed him, Joseph cited the world-renowned Tap God. "The way Savion Glover hears rhythm and channels it through his body is the way I aspire to hear language and channel it through my body," he said. "The body is the primary mechanism for carrying a story and for the making of ritual." He certainly has come a long way from the nine-year-old who--auditioning for Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk--did not know how to dance. Unimaginable!

Like Joseph, we were all beguiled by the presence of the author of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf. Shange, as interviewer, brought insightful questions and an effervescent spirit of generosity and wit. Imagine Shange--"she who walks like a lion"--wondering about the distinction between Ruby Keeler (of the hard-charging feet) and Ginger Rogers (of the light-skimming feet) and Joseph answering with a juicily word-embodied elucidation of the Afro-Haitian snake god, Damballah. Pure joy, pure joy. The two of them should really take this act on the road.

For Colored Girls deeply influenced the young Joseph, to be sure, and clearly directed his sense of compassion towards women and his commitment to playing a positive role as educator and activist. It would have been great to hear a little about his concern for environmental issues and eco-equity, described as "the radically democratic position that poor communities and communities of color are logistically and psychologically included in the new, clean and green economy." But if this interests you, keep watch for his upcoming performance project--red black and green: a blues. You can find out more about it at Life is Living.

To keep pace with 651 Arts, click here. Next up: poet-activist Amiri Baraka interviews actor-director Stephen Henderson, April 5, 7pm. (Information and ticketing)

Live & Outspoken with 651 Arts

As part of 651 Arts's Live & Outspoken series, Ntozake Shange will interview Marc Bamuthi Joseph:

Tuesday, March 8 (7PM)

The James and Martha Duffy Performance Space
Mark Morris Dance Center
3 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn (directions)

Artist and performer Marc Bamuthi Joseph is one of America’s most vital voices in performance, arts education, and artistic curation. After appearing on Broadway as a young actor, Joseph developed several poetically based works for the stage that toured across the US, Europe, and Africa. He is the artistic director of the 7-part HBO documentary Russell Simmons Presents Brave New Voices; an inaugural recipient of the United States Artists Rockefeller Fellowship, which annually recognizes 50 of the country’s “greatest living artists;” and mentor to young writers with Oakland’s YOUTH SPEAKS. Joseph speaks with Shange, who he has called “one of my greatest influences," about the artistic process, activism and more. Bamuthi will perform excerpts from his works Word Becomes Flesh and red, black and GREEN: a blues. 

Click here for tickets or call 212-868-4444.

Ntozake Shange and M. Nahadr interviewed

Terrance McKnight Interviews Ntozake Shange and M. Nahadr about 'For Colored Girls'

WNYC -- November 19, 2010

Marketing 'For Colored Girls’

Tyler Perry’s New Image With ‘For Colored Girls’

by Brooks Barnes, The New York Times, October 24, 2010