‘Being alive and being a woman and being coloured is a metaphysical dilemma I haven’t conquered yet’. Those are the words of one young girl as she grows up and struggles though life trying to avoid being what they all call her, to avoid being just one simple word: coloured.
It is not the unusual setting of the Oxford Union, or the group of singing girls that needs to be focused in this play, rather, it is the words which deserve the most attention. Words are used like red bricks to build the world, they can be imposed by others, created by ourselves, they forge our being.
For Coloured Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf is a passionate play, atypical because it underlines within the text a complex issue: how the words we use to define our world become as powerful as destiny. All the colours of the rainbow, represented by the girls on stage, ask the same question: should we accept a definition given by others? Or should we start facing language as another social struggle, flushing out the repression and discrimination in common everyday utterance?
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For Coloured Girls is, as the title makes clear from the beginning, also play which tackles many difficult issues, not only words but race, gender and abuse. The type of issues that even nowadays playwrights seem to have difficulty with. The group on stage are amazingly passionate as well as extremely energetic. The scenes are intertwined with dancing, the audience is continuously involved into the action, spoken to. The lady in Orange, Remi Graves, as well as Fiona Johnston, the lady in Yellow, deserve a special mention for the high intensity they bring to the stage with their acting. It would be unfair, however, not to stress that the quality of the entire group is impressive and this makes the play a pleasure to watch. Of course, the quality of the writing by Ntozae Shange also plays a key role: ‘this is not a love poem, this is a requiem for myself because I have died in a real way’.
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However, there are many risks taken when the issue of racism is raised, it is a problem we have all heard about without learning anything new. This is what you may feel following those girls through their memories so beautifully depicted; as the problems are led in front of you there doesn’t seem to be anything new under the sun. The even greater risk is that one will fall into those words. In fact, the stories we hear define the small group around a life of rape, music and continuous violence, and yet one knows that this isn’t all there is in such a complex world as that which the young girls inhabit.
The ‘coloured girls’ explore the complexity of women’s life in the 20th century. The play acts as refreshing reminder of the problems women still have to face, a crucial and ongoing struggle. It all finally sums up on this one struggle, the fight for getting a chance to choose. Although as an audience member it is easy to be entranced by the singing voices of this flamboyant bunch, the question which must not be forgotten is not who do you want to be, but who do you not want to be.
4 STARS
