In honor of Black History Month, Goucher College is presenting a performance of Ntozake Shange’s groundbreaking play “for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf.” The evening will open with a performance of excerpts from “I Can’t Breathe, But I Can Vote,” a new original work-in-progress by members of the Goucher community.
Both pieces will be performed starting at 7 p.m. on Friday, February 27, and Saturday, February 28, in the Mildred Dunnock Theatre of Goucher’s Meyerhoff Arts Center. The college’s Theatre Department is partnering with Umoja, Goucher’s black student union, for these productions. Admission is free with a suggested donation of $5.
For reservations, email dunnockboxoffice@gmail.com or call 410-337-6512. For more information, contact the project’s faculty adviser, Assistant Professor of Theatre Alvin Eng, at alvin.eng@goucher.edu.
“for colored girls” took Broadway by storm in 1976. The work is a self-described “choreopoem” composed of 20 poems that interweave seven nameless women of color’s stories of love, empowerment, struggle, and loss into a complex representation of sisterhood in the 1970s. The play ran for close to two years and was nominated for a Tony Award for Best New Play. Tyler Perry adapted the play into a film in 2009.
At Goucher, “for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf” is being directed by Najah Ali ’16 and will be performed by Ali with Nakpangi Ali ’17, Morgan Betancourt ’16, Brianna Butler ’17, Christina Kim ’15, KerriAnne Sejour ’15, and Alyssha Shanks ’16.
The “curtain raiser,” “I Can’t Breathe, But I Can Vote,” is a response to recent national issues and is being devised by Najah Ali, Alvin Eng, and Robert Fletcher ’16.
“for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf” is presented at Goucher by special arrangement with Samuel French, Inc.