Pertinent to women’s issues, play staged again

IF YOU missed the critically acclaimed and award-winning choreopoem, For Colored Girls, at the Grahamstown National Arts Festival, you’re in luck.

The winner of this year’s Standard Bank Ovation Award, produced by African-American writer Ntozake Shange, will be showing at the Con Cowan Theatre at the University of Johannesburg’s Bunting Road campus from next Friday to September 2.

Producer Grace Meadows said people who weren’t fam- iliar with the play could look forward to a “full theatre experience”.

“I’m not fond of placing work into genre boxes, but this piece’s genre of choreopoem says it all. New audiences can look forward to beautifullychoreographed movement that goes well with the poetic language,” Meadows said.

She also explained that it was important that the play be showcased now – with all of the conversations about rape culture in universities recently.

“We started working on this in March, when the protests at Rhodes about rape culture were happening and we felt at that time that it was important that we work on a piece like this, especially for it to come from a university space,” she explained.

The poetry written by Shange features emotionally-charged verses about a variety of issues that are of relevance to women, particularly black women. The poems tackle issues of rape, abortion, domestic violence, love, empowerment and loss. They weave interconnected stories among these seven women, in a complex representation of sisterhood.

Cast member Nkazimulo Mkhwanazi, 24, said working on the project has been a healing experience for her.

“It was emotionally taxing, but the production became a healing process.

“Some days, we wouldn’t even rehearse, we’d go into ourselves and let out what we were feeling at that moment,” Mkhwanazi said.

Shange’s original work features seven nameless women who can only be identified by the colour assigned to them. Tickets available from Computicket at R80.