For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf

Good morning and welcome to the programme.

50 years after it premiered on Broadway, the play For Coloured Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Enough has got its first major London production, described as a choreopoem, a series of poems connected by music that look into the issues affecting the African-American women telling their stories of oppression in a racist and and sexist society.

I'll be hearing from the play's director, Diane Page.

We'll be discussing words used to describe female anatomy after a campaign in the Netherlands called for a renaming of the word for labia, which is charmlippen, which translates as shame lips.

A hugely important work when it first ran on Broadway back in 1976.

It's taken 50 years for Ntozake Shungo's seminal choreo poem for coloured girls who've considered suicide when the rainbow is enough to get a major revival in the UK.

Overseeing that revival is director Diane Page, who's brought it to the Yard Theatre Hackney for the theatre's grand reopening following a major refurbishment.

I caught up with Diane to find out more about the play, why it's taken so long for the UK to pay attention and whether or not black women are getting a fair deal when it comes to cultural recognition.

So if you'd like to hear more about that, listen to the end to find out how to subscribe.

It was great chatting to Diane and I hope you enjoy listening.

I am joined by director Diane Page, who's here to talk about the new production of For Coloured Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enough, which is showing at the Yard Theatre in Hackney Wick.

Diane, welcome.

Recently, the state of New Jersey declared the Trenton home where poet, short story writer, and playwright Natsaki Shange lived a landmark.

I was among the first to publish an excerpt from Shange's For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide slash When the Rainbow is Enough in a magazine that the late A.I. Young, or Al Young, and I published called Yardbird Reader.

Delzacchi and I were in touch until two weeks before she died.

I think that I might have organizing Jane.

What is one of your favorite plays of all time?

For Colored Girls, Ntozake Shange's classic piece, my favorite play ever.

I love that play.

What is one of your favorite musicals of all time?