The new face of "Colored Girls"

Director Tyler Perry’s big-screen adaptation of “For Colored Girls” — the landmark theatrical journey through several black women’s lives — opens to great anticipation this week. and some trepidation.

A movie and television director and producer, Perry is best known for his films about black women under duress, most often featuring Madea, a gun-toting auntie with lots of attitude portrayed by the filmmaker. his movies use camp and gallons of sweet tea to wash down some authentic truths.

But could his version of Ntozake Shange’s very serious, Tony-nominated play “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When The Rainbow Is Enuf” speak to a new generation of colored girls?

How are their experiences different from the characters in the play who recounted, through poems and movement, lives full of abusive men, rough girlhoods, painful betrayals. Themes that were welcome confessions to many black female audiences a quarter century ago?

I even took a couple of Denverites in hot pursuit of their own “rainbows” to a preview screening: dancer Michelle Dorant (“The Lion King”) and small business owner Tonya Chaney and her 11-year-old daughter, Korynne.

We set out to discover: could the leap from play to movie, from then to now, still resonate.

Their answer and mine — yes. Though not all of it. In 2010, there is so much more light and opportunity in our lives than those of the vivid but wounded women who recite their pain in “For Colored Girls.”

In an introduction to the 1977 edition of the shattering, exquisite choreopoem, Shange wrote that the play represented a “struggle to become all that is forbidden by our environment, all that is forfeited by our gender, all that we have forgotten.”

These days, even in a time of deep economic struggle, it’s hard not to believe the tone of that sentence has changed for many black women. Yes, there is struggle. But we’ve become less tortured by what’s forbidden.

“When Ntozake was writing this, she was coming out of the Civil Rights and Black Power movement,” says Essence magazine’s entertainment director, Cori Murray. “At that time, something that could have been forbidden was a black president, a black first lady, those thoughts were forbidden then. even a black secretary of state for that matter — Condoleezza Rice and her story. fast forward to 2010.” The questions have a different spin, she says. “What can I do? What can’t I do? It’s a matter of opportunities.”

Shange’s performance piece, woven of poems and dance, began its journey in 1974 in a women’s bar called the Bacchanal, near Berkeley, Calif. In 1975 Shange and the work headed East. Eventually featuring an all-female cast of seven characters — the “lady in orange,” “lady in purple” “lady in blue . . .” — “Colored Girls” was massaged and expanded at performance spaces in New York City before moving to Joe Papp’s Public Theater and then Broadway’s Booth Theater in 1976.

Created at a time when the women’s movement was helping women — of all colors — find their voices, “For Colored Girls” was a fiercely feminist work, full of anguish, fury and hopes for recovery. it was also rife with accounts of tremendous male violence: sexual abuse, neglect, a heartbreaking murder. The movie is rated R, appropriately.

In the 30-year interim, there have been movies that have plunged the black community into often bitter debates between men and women about the depiction of black men: in particular “The Color Purple” (1985) and to a different degree 1995′s “Waiting to Exhale.”

Last month, the play was performed in Denver by Afterthought Theatre Company (at Shadow Theatre’s home in Aurora). But a play — with its spare production values, its love of language — can age remarkably well on-stage.

Perry’s own movies — from “Diary of a Mad Black Woman” to last year’s “I Can Do Bad all by Myself” — have been able to engage women-centered stories in which abuse often figures in without creating the same uncivil, gender wars.

Originally, music video-maker Nzingha Stewart was attached as director. “We were excited when we heard about Nzingha Stewart,” says Murray. “When Tyler was announced, the fever went kind of crazy. I think African-American women — African-Americans period — have been waiting for a film of this caliber to come along for so long, for a cast of this caliber to come together to be celebrated.”

December’s issue of the premiere magazine for African-American women features a split cover of the movie’s cast: the men in tuxes; the women in colorful gowns. and “For Colored Girls” is populated by intriguing performers, from Phylicia Rashad to Thandie Newton, Janet Jackson to Whoopi Goldberg, Kimberly Elise (Perry’s breakout hit “Diary of a Mad Black Woman”) to Tony winner Anika Noni Rose (“Caroline, or Change”).

Still, not everyone cheered when news broke that Perry would be taking on “For Colored Girls.”

“Literally, I was like ‘No. . . . no! Don’t do it,’ says Ashara Ekundayo, who hosted a special screening of the film for Denver audiences last week. “I was 6 years old when this play came out. I remember the book was on my mother’s nightstand. when I heard Tyler Perry was going to make a movie, I thought that’s like the holy grail. why on earth is anybody trying to make that into a movie? Let alone Tyler Perry? this is a genre unto itself, that choreopoem.”

For the record, Ekundayo, likes the movie.

Film critic Lisa Kennedy: 303-954-1567 or ; also on blogs.denverpostcom/madmoviegoer

Tonya Chaney

38, owner of Mykal Grant Salon

When it comes to pursuing your goals, do you think in terms of what’s possible, or what’s forbidden?

What’s possible — always. Anything that holds you back you use as your motivation to push you forward. I don’t even let my kids play “woe is me.” You get 20 seconds for your pity party, and then I’m going to shut it down.

Were you glad you took daughter Korynne?

Absolutely. at first. I was a little worried she was going to have nightmares. it was heavy. I think she didn’t get so much of this movie that it impacted her. she was asking if I was OK. I liked the conversation we had once we left. we had great conversation. Great.

OK, it’s a bit Miss America, but what have you done to pursue your rainbow?

I will be moving into my new salon next week. That has put gray hair on my head, but it’s a good gray. I feel like this has been a dream deferred. I shouldn’t say that. God has a process for everything. this is my baby. and now I’m going to move on, move up and move forward. The rainbow just began for us.

Michelle Dorant

40, mother, dancer, co-owner the dearly departed arthouse Neighborhood Flix Cinema & Cafe

Are you a fan of Shange’s play?

When I saw the play recently, I felt empowered. I felt like I hadn’t been inspired in a long time. I feel like I’ve been running through life, taking care of the kids. it reminded me, ‘Hey I am a powerful, beautiful woman in my own right.’ it inspired me to think about what is it that I want to do next.

There was something in the language and the words; the characters coming out on the other side maybe not completely healed or completely whole but on the way to being healed, on the way to wholeness.

When thinking about what you want for yourself, do you think about what’s forbidden to you?

“I don’t know if it’s because my parents didn’t grow up in this country — they’re naturalized citizens but they grew up in Barbados — but there was always this belief you could be and do whatever you wanted. they instilled that in me at an early age.

Barbados has a history of slavery also but it’s a different story, a different time line. But I never thought of things as being forbidden.

Korynne Chaney

11, sixth-grader

What are some of your dreams?

Well, I want to be a designer, and I want to be in the Olympics in gymnastics. A goal by the end of the year is to get straight A’s.

Where do you go to school?

Denver School of Science and Technology.

What did you think of the movie. it was deep, right?

Yeah it was, but I wasn’t so traumatized as my mom made it sound.

What have you done this year to pursue your rainbow?

I took care of my little brother Kaleb (9) and little sister Karson (2). I make sure they’re safe. I watch out for them.

<a href="http://www.denverpost.com/movies/ci_16494578tag:news.google.com,2005:cluster=http://www.denverpost.com/movies/ci_16494578Tue, 02 Nov 2010 07:18:59 GMT 00:00″>The new face of “Colored Girls”

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