Camille A. Brown to Direct and Choreograph For Colored Girls… on Broadway

Tony-nominated choreographer Camille A. Brown (Choir Boy) will move into the director's chair to helm the Broadway revival of Ntozake Shange's for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf, which is set to bow on Broadway in 2022.

Billed as a "choreopoem", For Colored Girls… tells the stories of seven Black women using poetry, song and movement. It debuted at the Public Theater in 1976 before moving on to a two-year run at Broadway's Booth Theatre. This revival will be the first on Broadway since then.

It is by no means the first revival ever: Brown choreographed the 2019 revival at the Public Theater off-Broadway. In her review of that production, TheaterMania critic Hayley Levitt wrote that Brown's choreography, "fortif[ies] the molecular connections between each of the women onstage while bridging the gap between traditional African-American social dance and modern hip-hop."

Brown is the choreographer behind Choir Boy and the atmospheric Broadway revival of Once on This Island. She has worked off-Broadway on Toni Stone and the Shakespeare in the Park production of Much Ado About Nothing. She choreographed the Academy Award-winning film Ma Rainey's Black Bottom and the acclaimed production of Porgy and Bess at the Metropolitan Opera. Next month, Brown will become the first Black woman to direct a mainstage production at the Met when she open's the opera's season with Fire Shut Up In My Bones.

"I'm extremely thrilled and honored to helm this new production of For Colored Girls…," said Brown in a press statement. "It's an amazing feeling to bring this seminal show back to Broadway 45 years after it opened at the Booth Theatre on September 15, 1976. I look forward to diving into the divine Ntozake Shange's choreopoem and celebrating her legacy."

Nelle Nugent, Ron Simons, and Kenneth Teaton are producing.