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Jasmine Guy directs Nicole Ari Parker and Robin Givens in “For Colored Girls”

Jasmine Guy (Dead Like Me, A Different World) is set to direct the upcoming stage production of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf from July 12 to August 9 at The Soutwest Arts Center in Atlanta, GA. Here’s how True Colors Theatre Company describes the production, which will preview on July 12 and 14:

Directed by Broadway star and television actress, Jasmine Guy, Ntozake Shange’s legendary choreopoem about the African-American female journey through America is portrayed through the poetry, dancing and narrative of a slate of women who become the colorful ladies of the rainbow. Both a joyous celebration of a unique culture and a wrenchingly real portrait of the struggle of an oppressed minority, For Colored Girls… tells the timeless story through 20 beautiful vignettes that inspire laughter and tears for the passion and pain of the black woman’s experience.
Nicole Ari Parker (Imagine That, Brown Sugar, Remember the Titans, Soul Food) and Robin Givens (House of Payne, Boomerang) will star. How I wish I lived in the South right now! This is the perfect blend of a terrific, thought-provoking play, and TV/film actresses I’m a fan of (I grew up watching A Different World, and will admit to owning The Incredibly True Adventures of 2 Girls in Love, Remember the Titans, Brown Sugar, and all five seasons of Soul Food on DVD).

Ntozake Shange‘s famous play was first performed in a women’s bar outside of Berkeley, CA, made its way to New York, and debuted on Broadway in 1976, earning a Best Play Tony nomination and winning the Best Featured Actress in a Play Tony for Trazana Beverley. It was published as a novel in 1977, and made into a TV movie in 1982 starring Shange, Beverly, Laurie Carlos, Alfre Woodard and Lynn Whitfield.

It was supposed to be revived on Broadway last summer with India.Arie starring and Whoopi Goldberg producing, but the funding apparently fell through.

Here’s what Guy, who has starred in Broadway productions of The Wiz, Chicago, and Grease, and starred earlier this spring in the True Colors’s production of Pearl Cleage‘s Blues for an Alabama Sky, says about For Colored Girls:

I love the words, messages and sisterhood. I love the movement and singing throughout the piece. Most importantly, the message shows the way African-Americans communicate as a culture. Overall, it shows different colors of pain, struggle and celebration.
If you live near Atlanta, get your tickets now for the show and the second post-show talkback with Jasmine and the cast on Sunday, July 19 (the first one sold out).

If you’ve seen a production of this play, or read the book, leave your thoughts about it in the comments!

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