The Tribune

By JEFFARAH GIBSON

Tribune Features Writer

jgibson@tribunemedia.net

PAIN is universal. It is a force that people try to escape or ignore at all costs.

However, the latest staging of “for coloured girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf” does exactly the opposite. The production of the acclaimed theatre piece, which opened last week at the Dundas Theatre, encourages audience members to indulge in their pain without restraint, if only for a moment

The play, by Ringplay Production’s Black Box Theatre company, was directed by Dr Nicolette Bethel and features performers including Claudette “Cookie” Allens, Onike Archer, Aleah Carey, Michaella Forbes, Erin Knowles, Arthellia Isaacs, Myra McPhee and Theresa Moxey-Ingraham. Lawrence Carroll was responsible for the choreography and movement.

The term “black box theatre” often refers to experimental productions that are staged in smaller, unadorned spaces. This was also the case at the Dundas, where “for coloured girls” was performed in the threatre’s old rehearsal room which can accommodate about 80 seats. As with other innovative threatre productions of this type, the walls of the room were painted black, thereby giving the space the intimate feel of a small “black box”.

Since the production’s opening last week at the Dundas Theatre, the play has enjoyed success with Bahamian audiences. It will closes on July 26.
“For coloured girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf” is a dramatic piece based on a series of 21 poems, many of them linked to music, by playwright and poet Ntozake Shange.

She called her work, first produced on Broadway in 1976, a “choreopoem”.

While the voices of different women explore the nature of racism and sexism in the US as it entered the last quarter of the 20th century, too many of the issues still ring true in the Bahamas of today.

Each performer wears a colour, and their voices make a prism that shines light on what it means to live full, joyful lives in a world plagued with cruelty and violence. Shange’s original work was written for seven women, but this Bahamian production adds an eighth voice, that of the Rainbow herself.

“The play is based on individual poems written by Ntozake Shange and originally performed by her, and so though the words are placed in different women’s mouths they almost all come from her own experience,” Dr Bethel told Tribune Arts and Entertainment. “This isn’t to say that she experienced everything in this production, but that the pieces are very personal to her.

“The themes addressed centre around what it means to be a woman of colour in the Americas, and specifically in the USA. It also looks at the complexities of women’s relationships with men, and black women’s relationships with black men in particular, and treats heartbreak, loss, illness, and violence as well as love and friendship and sisterhood. The best thing of all is that it shines a light on how the heartbreak and loss can be overcome, and celebrates the strength of women.”

The ‘Lady in Yellow’, played by Theresa Moxey-Ingraham, begins the play in a very exuberant way, as the character is a recent high school graduate. She evolves into a woman who has been used and abused in many ways, with her ultimate fate being her contracting HIV/AIDS from her partner.
“I think what women can get from the play is if you are not careful you can lose so much of yourself in intimate relationships. They also can get that there is some fun and there is some joy in being a woman,” Dr Bethel said.

“The poems were written more than 30 years ago, but they are still relevant because the issues that women face today have not really changed.”

Myra McPhee, who plays ‘Lady in Blue’, said: “My role is about a lady who wants to be so much more than she was born to be and so really finds these different experiences through music, through art, through moving from borough to borough, and this is about young people who want to explore who they are. I see a lot of myself in this role to because I live in different countries and different cultures. All of the experiences with trying new things makes you a better person.”

Dr Bethel said ever since the first staging of the production, audience members have commented that it is “deep and it makes them think about their own situations”.
“Women who attend say that the monologues touch on their own lives and make them look at their own experiences from a different perspective; it’s energy, it’s humour and it’s joy. Even though the issues being dealt with are difficult, the play leaves the audience with hope and a sense of resolution,” she said.