Play about African American women runs two weekends
The Beacon Theatre, in association with 4th Wall Productions, will present Ntozake Shange’s 1975 Broadway choreopoem play, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf, directed by AnnChris Warren. Seven local and visiting actresses will dramatize wheels-within-wheels characters, each dressed in their signature rainbow color.
This Southern Dutchess debut production weaves together poetry, movement and music, enveloping the themes of “love, abandonment, rape and abortion” as related in various stories. The play was recently adapted into a hit film directed by Tyler Perry, starring Felicia Rashad and Janet Jackson.
“The most wonderful thing about how it came to be that I would direct For Colored Girls was that I was asked by the producers of 4th Wall Productions if I would mind directing an ‘ethnic piece,’” said director Warren, of Kingston. “‘Mind?’ I thought. I would be honored! As an African American director and performer in the Hudson Valley, this is a rare treat. It’s even more of a rarity to do a show that centers around seven African American women.”
“For Colored Girls is all about strength, overcoming obstacles, loving yourself as you are, accepting all the choices you have made in life, good and bad, and the scars you have to prove it,” Warren continued. “I approached this show with the goal to bring this strength and love out of the writing through these seven beautiful women and never for a second stopped to think how it would change me as an individual. Then boom — there it was. A new understanding of who I am and what it truly means to be yourself, love yourself, and stay strong and proud as you move to the end of your own rainbow.”
The show opens on Friday, Jan. 18, at 8 p.m., with subsequent performances on Saturday, Jan. 19, at 8 p.m., and Sunday, Jan. 20, at 3 p.m. Three additional performances take place the next weekend: Friday, Jan. 25, and Saturday, Jan. 26, at 8 p.m., and Sunday, Jan. 27, at 3 p.m. Tickets are $18; to purchase go to thebeacontheatre.org. The Beacon Theatre is located at 445 Main St. in Beacon.
