About the Play

for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf by Ntozake Shange is an Obie Award-winning series of poetic monologues accompanied by dance movements and music. These "choreopoems" tell the stories of seven women and explore what it is to be of color and female in the twentieth century. First published in 1975, it was praised by The New Yorker for "encompassing...every feeling and experience a woman has ever had".

"for colored girls" was performed at MIT in 1992 as a student production directed by Maya Trotz '94, with faculty advisor Decima Francis, an MIT artist-in-residence and founder of the Roxbury Outreach Shakespeare Experience. The play was sponsored by MIT Music & Theatre Arts, and in 1999, was performed again on campus by the Black Theater Guild and MIT Dramashop, and directed by MIT Associate Professor Thomas DeFrantz.