Dancing to Keep From Dying (For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf)

“The issue here is not race; the issue is self-respect and self-empowerment of women. The lovely thing about this production [is that] we’ve had people – because of the domestic violence theme – there have been women who’ve decided to take action and there have been men who have reassessed their behavior towards women. We are on a mission here.” So said Bernard Hazel, director of the Trinidad Theatre Workshop production of Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf, which was staged at the TRINIDAD THEATRE WORKSHOP’S Hart St, Port of Spain, theatre in March.

Incorporating the most convincing and moving performance of poetry I have seen for several years, Colored Girls is a series of inter-related poems on the themes of race, class and gender – the infamous triple jeopardy – written by American Shange during the 70s but adapted by Hazel to fit a West Indian 90s world. In truth, little adaptation needed to be done, as the choreo-poem’s relevance, sadly, has not diminished over the last 22 years or the thousands of miles that separate San Francisco, California from San Fernando, Trinidad.

The young troupe of actors who performed Shange’s classic went by the name of Nu Faces, and some of them are definitely faces to remember. Of the Nu Faces, I and most of the audience members I spoke to (okay, maccoed) found Denella Hall, who played the Lady in Yellow (that’s actually the name of the character; I’m not making this up), to be the star of the show. She shone as the Jamaican in New York, bringing a dry wit to the words of her character that had the audience believing in her date rape experience, her sense of urban dislocation and her personal effrontery when “somebody almost walked off wid alla [her] stuff”. Lady in Brown, too, was quite something to see. She embodied the fierceness and beauty that strong black women everywhere are famous for. Lady in Brown, played by Nathalie Fortune, delivered a narrative on abortion that chilled and terrified many in the audience, but in the final analysis struck home to many women. Lydia Bourgeoise, Lady in Purple, was funny and cute in her piece “toussaint”; and dancer Nalini Akal as Lady in Blue made quite an impact with her dance in “sechita”.

Martin Guevara’s costumes weren’t the next craze, but the pretty little voile numbers that had everybody looking sexy. The set was, I’ll guess, influenced by Bernard Hazel’s night job as Juana LaCubana, because there was fishnet and sequins all over the place. I particularly enjoyed the play’s soundtrack, which included a little disco, a little soca and some salsa and reggae – a bit of something for everyone.

When this play is re-staged, as it surely must be, I look forward to seeing it again. It is worth it.

Lisa Allen-Agostini