A filmed enactment of Ntozake Shange's stage production, originally presented by the New York Shakespeare Festival, For Colored Girls is a linked series of vignettes, choreographed and orchestrated blank verse poems, in which black women share stories of their lives, loves, betrayals and triumphs. Shange fashions a stylized codification of oral herstory, truths told in parable, passed down from mother to daughter, shared sister to sister, to ease hardships and trials, to celebrate moments of glory. The ensemble cast is potent and accessible, with special mention to Woodard, Whitfield and author Shange. An unusual and powerful film that retains the immediacy of its theatre origins. An American Playhouse production
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