Venue:  Scaena Theatre, UFS-Main Campus

Language: English 

Genre: Choreopoem / Drama

Date and times:

12 September @ 19:30

13 September @ 19:30

14 Septermber@ 19:30

Tickets:         

R 40.00 per person

R 30.00 for students, scholars,

R 25.00 for pensioners

Bookings Computicket (0861 915 8000)

 A beautiful fusion between dance, poetry, drama and music is what you can expect in For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf, the next play brought to the stage by the University of the Free State Drama Department. Issues women all over the world are struggling with, like abuse, identity crises, the coming of age and self-love, empowerment and depression, are themes this choreopoem explores. Written in 1975 by American author Ntozake Shange, it is today just as relevant as then.

 For Colored Girls uses nineteen poems by seven women who experience different individual problems. Each of these characters go through a journey of their own but come to realise that they are not alone. While they are all confronted with similar issues, they are not as different from each other after all.

“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”- Lady in Brown

The characters’ names reflect the colours of the rainbow: Lady in Red, Lady in Blue, Lady in Brown, Orange, Yellow, Purple and Green.

American playwright, poet and feminist activist fighting for the rights of black women, Ntozake Shange, was born in Trenton New Jersey, as Paulette Williams. When she separated from her first husband, she often attempted to commit suicide. However, focusing her anger and hurt on the limitations that black women have she was able to regain her inner strength. She then took her African name, from South African friends at the time – Ntozake Shange – which means “she who comes with her own things “and “she who walks like a lion”.

Being an educator, performer/director, writer and committed solo spoken word artist, she said “the poems find[ing] their way through me to the audience”, but that she was so nervous in the beginning of putting these poems into a performance, because “I was a performance poet, not a theatre artist.”

For Colored Girls will be performed by second year drama students from the UFS, from 12 – 14 September 2018, at 9:30 in the Scaena Theatre, UFS.

Please note the age restriction of 16 years, as some content is too mature for younger viewers. Tickets are available at Computicket. For more information go to https://www.facebook.com/ufsdrama/