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

1
for colored girls who have considered suicide/
when the rainbow is enuf.byNtozake Shange

• REMEMBERING THE GOLDEN POND AESTHETICS TREATISE
• BLACK THEATER
• It must be a recuperative, preservative, and
  transformative ritual
• Shange during production The cast is enveloping
  almost 6,000 people a week in the words of a
  young black girl growing up, her triumphs
  errors, our struggle to become all that is
  forbidden by our environment, all that we have
  forgotten
• It transforms Space
• Shange- The space we used was the space I knew
  Women Studies Departments, bars, cafes, poetry
  centers
• It must have a continuity of sprit
• Shange- Every move weve made since the first
  showing of for colored girls in California has
  demanded changes to get as close to

distilled as any of us in all our art forms can
make it.
2
Ntozake Shange Biography (1948-)(Paulette
Williams or She who walks like a lion and brings
her own things.)

• As a part of an upper middle class and rich
  intellectual family in Trenton New Jersey, she
  was an avid reader of great authors to include
  Jean Genet, Herman Melville, and Langston Hughes.
  She also came in contact with great musicians and
  singers like Dizzy Gillespie, Chuck Berry,
  Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and Josephine Baker,
  all friends of her parents. W.E.B. DuBois was
  also a family visitor.
• Returned to New Jersey at age thirteen (1961/62)
  where she completed high school and became
  increasingly aware of the inequities of the
  American society on black females.
• Began at Bernard College in 1966 at the age of
  18. A year later, attempted suicide after a
  recent separation from her law school husband and
  becoming consumed with a sense of bitterness and
  deep alienation. She actually had made a series
  of attempts at suicide to include sticking her
  head in an oven, drinking chemicals, slashing her
  wrist, taking an overdose of Valium, and driving
  her Volvo into the Pacific.
• Earned a bachelor's degree with honors in
  American studies from Barnard College in 1970.
  Earned a master's degree in American studies in
  1973 from the University of Southern California,
  Los Angeles.
• In 1971 decided to take an African name Ntozake
  means "she who comes with her own things, and
  Shange means "who walks like a lion." This change
  occurred as a mechanism to reinforce her inner
  strength and to redirect her life.
• Taught humanities, women's studies, and
  Afro-American studies from 1972-1975 at Sonoma
  State College, Mills College, and University of
  California Extension. During the same period, she
  was dancing and reciting poetry with the Third
  World Collective, Raymond Sawyer's Afro-American
  Dance Company West Coast Dance Works and her
  own company which was then called For Colored
  Girls Who Have Considered Suicide.
• In 1975 moved to New York which was facilitated
  by the production of her choreopoem, for colored
  girls who have considered suicide/when the
  rainbow is enuf .
• First produced Off-Broadway, by Joseph Papp, the
  play soon moved onto Broadway at the Booth
  Theatre, becoming the second play to be written
  by an African-American woman to reach Broadway
  and won a number of awards, including the Obie
  Award. This play, her most famous piece, was a
  twenty part poem chronicling the lives of black
  females in the United States. The poem was
  eventually made into the stage play, and was
  first published in book form in 1977.
• Shange has written a number of successful plays,
  including an adaptation of Bertolt Brecht's
  Mother Courage and Her Children (1980), which won
  an Obie Award.In 2003)
• Wrote and oversaw the production of Lavender
  Lizards and Lilac Landmines Layla's Dream while
  serving as a visiting artist at the University of
  Florida, Gainesville.
• Contributes individual poems, essays, and short
  stories of hers have appeared in numerous
  magazines and anthologies.
• She now prefers to be know for her current,
  non-commercial work, including her bilingual work
  with the Latin American working peoples theater,
  her association with the Feminist Art Institute,
  and her installation art.

3
Shanges Self-Professed Influences Before
Reaching the Other Side of the Rainbow Baraka,
Brecht and the Plays Major Themes and Symbols

• SELF-PROFESSED INFLUENCES
• Baldwin Shange is influenced by Brecht. We
  see this in various ways. First and foremost is
  that the piece calls attention to itself as
  performance. Shange is using Epic Theater and
  the alienation-effect to first and foremost, as
  she tells us in her introduction, to convey a
  message, I came to understand that these
  twenty-odd poems composed a single statement, a
  choreopoem . Our struggle to become all that
  is forbidden by our environment, all that is
  forfeited by our gender, all that we have
  forgotten.
• Baraka? (here Shange is paying more of a nod to
  the movement than the man) Shange refashions
  Barakas use of slashes, lower case letters,
  phonetic spelling and dialect and embraces the
  BAM idea of using the theater as a center as a
  weapon for consciousness raising inside the Black
  community. BUT THERE IS A NOTABLE DIFFERENCE
  HERE WHAT IS IT?
• Shange later clarified that her writing style was
  a means by which she could write herself (and
  Black woman-hood) into literature to attack
  deform n maim the language I was taught to hate
  myself in.
• FORM, GENESIS AND PERFORMANCE- (more on Shanges
  Brechtian Influence)
• Monologues vs. choreopoem (a series of poems
  choreographed to music). The performers of a
  choreopoem are, according to Shange , supposed to
  NARRATE the lines while dancing the poems.
  (BRECHTS ALIENATION EFFECT)
• HOWEVER! These are not poems set to music with
  accompanying dance steps, but rather an
  integration of speech, movement, gesture, and
  music that together comprise the CHOREOPOEM
• This form, for Shange, serves as
  a new space for black culture, a medium that
  would not be judged by the stifling conventions
  of European and American theater. So whereas
  Baldwin turned to Brecht to articulate the
  absurdity of race in America, Shange refashions
  Brecht, making his EPIC THEATER a space to
  explore these same absurdities, but her theater,
  unlike Baldwins, does not look like the theater
  of Brecht (as does Baldwins).
• AND THIS IS HER THEATRICAL GENIUS! THE PLAY IS
  BOTH A BRECHTIAN PIECE THAT ASKS ITS AUDIENCE TO
  STEP BACK, EXAMINE, AND HEAR A MESSAGE AND IT IS
  ALSO (to borrow from Houston Baker) A DISTINCTLY
  AFRICAN-AMERICAN FORM OF EXEGETIC THEATRE. It
  seeks to engage the audience in a performative
  dialogic process where form and content are one
  in other words the play is a transformative
  ritual. (This is not quite true owing to the
  ending, but well get to that later
• SYMBOLS
• THE RAINBOW- Shange explained that she realized
  that the rainbow is the possibility to start all
  over again with the power and beauty of
  ourselves, b The rainbow is a fabulous symbol
  for me . If you see one color, its not
  beautiful. If you see them all, it is. A
  colored girl, by my definition, is a girl of many
  colors. But she can only see her overall beauty
  if she can see all the colors of herself. To do
  that, she has to look deep inside her. And when
  she looks inside herself, she will find love and
  beauty.
• Staging elements costumes, movement, lighting,
  etc.
• THEMES
• Black Womanhood and Black womens
  self-realization/ emancipation. (Racism, Sexism
  The Black Macho and down low), Identity,
  Alienation and B.A.M. Feminism)

4
Dark Phrases Ritual, Reflection, Heterogeneity,
and Unity in the Rainbow (p.3-7)

• The stage is in darkness. Harsh music is heard as
  dim blue lights come up. One after another, seven
  women run onto the stage from each of the exits.
  They all freeze in postures of distress. The
  follow spot picks up the lady in brown. She comes
  to life and looks around at the other ladies. All
  of the others are still. She walks over to the
  lady in red and calls to her. The lady in red
  makes no response.
• ?LADY IN BROWN  dark phrases of womanhood of
  never havin been a girl/ half-notes scattered/
  without rhythm / no tune/ distraught laughter
  fallin/ over a black girl's shoulder/ it's
  funny/ it's hysterical/ the melody-less-ness of
  her dance/ don't tell nobody don't tell a soul /
  she's dancin on beer cans shingles
• this must be the spook house/ another song
  with no singers/ lyrics/ no voices/
  interrupted solos/ unseen performances
• are we ghouls?/ children of horror? /
  the joke?
• don't tell nobody don't tell a soul/ are
  we animals? have we gone crazy?
• i can't hear anythin / but maddening
  screams / the soft strains of death / you
  promised me you promised me . . . / somebody/
  anybody sing a black girl's song bring her out to
  know herself to know you but sing her rhythms
  carin/ struggle/ hard times sing her song of life
  she's been dead so long closed in silence so long
  she doesn't know the sound of her own voice her
  infinite beauty she's half-notes scattered
  without rhythm/ no tune sing her sighs sing the
  song of her possibilities sing a righteous gospel
  let her be born let her be born handled warmly.
• ?LADY IN BROWN  i'm outside chicago LADY IN
  YELLOW  i'm outside detroit ?LADY IN PURPLE  i'm
  outside houston LADY IN RED  i'm outside
  baltimore LADY IN GREEN  i'm outside san
  francisco LADY IN BLUE  i'm outside
  manhattan?LADY IN ORANGE  i'm outside st. louis
• LADY IN BROWN  this is for colored girls who
  have considered suicide/ but moved to the ends of
  their own rainbows.
• ?EVERYONE  mama's little baby likes shortnin,
  shortnin/ mama's little baby likes shortnin bread

• Talking Points
• Describe the lack (and non lack) of the communal
  in this scene
• How is heterogeneity being portrayed here?
• What is the paradox of Shanges symbolic rainbow?
  (Keep in mind that rainbows are made up of all
  colors and and allow for reflection)
• Describe the multiple layers of exegetic theater
  at work in this scene. OR How is Shange
  suggesting choreopoetics work here? Why follow a
  soliloquy with a childrens song? When does this
  become a Black play? (When does Shange say, in
  essence, Let there be a Black womans theater
  in the same way Jones said, Let there be a Black
  poem.)?

5
sechita(p. 23-25)Past Performances and
Incarnations of Colored Girls Identities and
Archetypes

• Soft deep music is heard, voices calling
  "Sechita" come from the wings and volms. The lady
  in purple enters from up right.
• ?LADY IN PURPLE  once there were quadroon balls/
  elegance in st. louis/ laced mulattoes/ gamblin
  down the mississippi/ to memphis/ new orleans n
  okra crepes near the bayou/ where the poor white
  trash wd sing/ moanin/ strange/ liquid tones/
  thru the swamps/
• The lady in green enters from the right volm she
  is Sechita and for the rest of the poem dances
  out Sechita's life. sechita had heard these
  things/ she moved as if she'd known them/ the
  silver n high-toned laughin/ the violins n marble
  floors/ sechita pushed the clingin delta dust wit
  painted toes/ the patch-work tent waz
  poka-dotted/ stale lights snatched at the
  shadows/ creole carnival waz playin natchez in
  ten minutes/ her splendid red garters/
  gin-stained n itchy on her thigh/ blk-diamond
  stockings darned wit yellow threads/ an ol
  starched taffeta can-can fell abundantly orange/
  from her waist round the splinterin chair/
  sechita/ egyptian/ goddess of creativity/ 2nd
  millennium/ threw her heavy hair in a coil over
  her neck/ sechita/ goddess/ the recordin of
  history/ spread crimson oil on her cheeks/ waxed
  her eyebrows/ n unconsciously slugged the last
  hard whiskey in the glass/ the broken mirror she
  used to decorate her face/ made her forehead tilt
  backwards/ her cheeks appear sunken/ her sassy
  chin only large enuf/ to keep her full lower lip/
  from growin into her neck/ sechita/ had learned
  to make allowances for the distortions/ but the
  heavy dust of the delta/ left a tinge of grit n
  darkness/ on every one of her dresses/ on her
  arms her shoulders/ sechita/ waz anxious to get
  back to st. louis/ the dirt there didnt crawl
  from the earth into yr soul/ at least/ in st.
  louis/ the grime waz store bought second-hand/
  here in natchez/ god seemed to be wipin his feet
  in her face/ one of the wrestlers had finally won
  tonite/ the mulatto/ raul/ was sposed to hold the
  boomin half-caste/ searin eagle/ in a bear hug/ 8
  counts/ get thrown unawares/ fall out the ring/ n
  then do searin eagle in for good/ sechita/ cd
  hear redneck whoops n slappin on the back/ she
  gathered her sparsely sequined skirts/ tugged the
  waist cincher from under her greyin slips/ n made
  her face immobile/ she made her face like
  nefertiti/ approachin her own tomb/ she suddenly
  threw/ her leg full-force/ thru the canvas
  curtain/ a deceptive glass stone/ sparkled/
  malignant on her ankle/ her calf waz tauntin in
  the brazen carnie lights/ the full moon/ sechita/
  goddess/ of love/ egypt/ 2nd millennium/
  performin the rites/ the conjurin of men/
  conjurin the spirit/ in natchez/ the mississippi
  spewed a heavy fume of barely movin waters/
  sechita's legs slashed furiously thru the cracker
  nite/ gold pieces hittin the makeshift stage/
  her thighs/ they were aimin coins tween her
  thighs/ sechita/

Studying the mythology of women from Antiquity
to the present day led directly to the piece
sechita in which a dance hall girl is perceived
as a deity, as slut, as innocent knowing.
Shange (1977) sechita/ egyptian/ goddess of
creativity/ 2nd millennium / threw her heavy hair
in a coil over her neck/ sechita/ goddess/ the
recordin of history / spread crimson oil on her
cheeks/ waxed her eyebrows/ n unconciously
slugged the last hard whisky in the class

• 1) Keeping in mind the Brechtian project
  of Shanges play, namely to envelop the audience
  in all that has been forbidden and forfeited by
  our gender, all that we have forgotten, describe
  how this scene performs that work. How is this
  more than a monologue in front of a peep show?
  How do Shanges choreopoetics flip the script
  on the exploitation of women and to what ends do
  they do so?
• 2) The conflation of the word in the moment
  (the monologue) with the content (the play).
  What is Shange trying to suggest about the power
  that might lie (in respect to self liberation in
  a world conspiring against it), within feminine
  Archetypes? Why does the monologue shift back
  and forth between mentioning brutal historical
  realities only then to slip back into a
  celebration of timelessness and majesty? How
  might this be a suggestion to the community on
  how to make it through the day to day sht that
  this actor has to put up with?

6
no more love poems 4 (45) Culminates in the
Self-and Communal- The Love of ChoreopoeticsMove
ment/Chant/Expression/Ritual/Renewal

• ?
• ?LADY IN YELLOW  i've lost it touch wit reality/
  i dont know who's doin it i thot i waz but i waz
  so stupid i waz able to be hurt that's not
  real/ not anymore/ i shd be immune/ if i'm still
  alive that's what i waz discussin/ how i am
  still alive my dependency on other livin beins
  for love i survive on intimacy tomorrow/ that's
  all i've got goin the music waz like smack
  you knew abt that still refused my dance waz
  not enuf/ it waz all i had but bein alive
  bein a woman bein colored is a metaphysical
  dilemma/ i havent conquered yet/ do you see the
  point my spirit is too ancient to understand the
  separation of soul gender/ my love is too
  delicate to have thrown back on my face
• The ladies in red, green, and brown enter
  quietly in the background all of the ladies
  except the lady in yellow are frozen the lady in
  yellow looks at them, walks by them, touches
  them they do not move
• ?LADY IN YELLOW  my love is too delicate to have
  thrown back on my face
• The lady in yellow starts to exit into the stage
  right volm. Just as she gets to the volm, the
  lady in brown comes to life.
• ?LADY IN BROWN  my love is too beautiful to have
  thrown back on my face
• ?LADY IN PURPLE  my love is too sanctified to
  have thrown back on my face
• .EVERYONE 
• (but started by the lady in orange) and saturday
  nite and saturday nite and saturday nite
• ?EVERYONE 
• (but started by the lady in red) and complicated
  and complicated and complicated and complicated
  and complicated and complicated and complicated
  and complicated
• The dance reaches a climax and all of the ladies
  fall out tired, but full of life and
  togetherness.

Talking Points 1) Lets first pay attention to
the poem. How would you characterize the change
that occurs in the voice of the voice of the
persona? How would you describe the change in
words as they are written on the page? Is the
speaker/writer coming into clarity? Why or Why
not? Locate the confusion. Does the Lady in
Yellow make a step towards conquering this
dilemma? What does she want you to see? Is the
dilemma in question one that just is, or is it
one that language, as this poem frames matters,
seems to complicate or re-instantiate? 2) In
this scene of the choreopoem which Shange,
notably, does not give a title, we see a
liberation build and culminate. It comes
immediately after the sequence of no more love
poems, all of which express a metaphysical
frustration with love as it effects colored
girls. Describe the multiple liberations that
occur in this scene? When the performers do away
with love poems in order to create this love
poem, how are they, in a sense, mirroring
Shanges project with respect to the analogy I
drew between Malcoms speech and the Brechtian
message of Shanges play
7
a laying on of hands p. 60Completing the
Transformative Ritual

• ?LADY IN RED  i waz missin somethin
• ?LADY IN GREEN  somethin promised
• ?LADY IN ORANGE  somethin free
• ?LADY IN PURPLE  a layin on of hands
• ?LADY IN BLUE  i know bout/ layin on bodies/
  layin outta man bringin him alla my fleshy self
  some of my pleasure bein taken full eager wet
  like i get sometimes i waz missin somethin
• ?LADY IN PURPLE  a layin on of hands
• ?LADY IN BLUE  not a man
• ?LADY IN YELLOW  layin on
• ?LADY IN PURPLE  not my mama/ holdin me tight/
  sayin i'm always gonna be her girl not a layin on
  of bosom womb a layin on of hands the holiness
  of myself released
• ?LADY IN RED  i sat up one nite walkin a boardin
  house screamin/ cryin/ the ghost of another woman
  who waz missin what i waz missin i wanted to jump
  up outta my bones be done wit myself leave me
  alone go on in the wind it waz too much i fell
  into a numbness til the only tree i cd see took
  me up in her branches held me in the breeze made
  me dawn dew that chill at daybreak the sun
  wrapped me up swingin rose light everywhere the
  sky laid over me like a million men i waz cold/ i
  waz burnin up/ a child endlessly weavin
  garments for the moon wit my tears i found god in
  myself i loved her/ i loved her fiercely
• All of the ladies repeat to themselves softly the
  lines i found god in myself i loved her. It
  soon becomes a song of joy, started by the lady
  in blue. The ladies sing first to each other,
  then gradually to the audience. After the song
  peaks the ladies enter into a closed tight
  circle.
• ?LADY IN BROWN  this is for colored girls who
  have considered suicide/ but are movin to the
  ends of their own rainbows
• (THE END.)

• Talking Points
• Keep in mind that this laying on of hands is
  making me the Ladiez whole because they were
  missing something promised and free. What were
  they missing?
• Keep Brechts Epic Theater in Mind. The play
  proclaims itself a ritual in this scene. What
  kind of ritual is occurring (if one is) with the
  laying on of hands?
• How does the Lady in Reds monologue
  contextualize this ritual with respect to
  Christian cosmology and/as rapist.
• I found god in myself I loved her. The lady
  in reds statement becomes, in turn a chant. How
  does (or does it?) this chant transform both the
  statement and the speakers once it becomes a
  chant. Describe the multiple resonances of this
  transformation. Have the Ladiez merged into one
  universal WOMAN or is something much more
  complex going on here?
• Notice the Brechtian ending. The Ladiez unfold
  and all face the audience to deliver a message
  for colored girls who have considered suicide/
  but are movin to the end of their own rainbows.
  If this message for that audience alone? If so,
  was Malcoms only for the men on the Nation of
  Islam? Lets hear it INFLAMMATORY DISCUSSION
  TIME

8
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