'Rainbow' Will Illuminate the 'Streets'

A quick glance at the lengthy titles of Ntozake Shange’s “for colored girls who’ve considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf” and Keith Antar Mason’s “for black boys who have considered homicide when the streets were too much,” two plays that deal with what it means to be black in America, might suggest that to perform each play by itself was, well, enough.

But this season’s production by blackC.A.S.T., Harvard’s theater company dedicated to black community and student theater, attempts to fuse the two scripts into a new play, “when the rainbow is enuf/...&the streets were too much,” that premiered yesterday in the Loeb Experimental Theatre.

Shange’s all-female play, which debuted in 1968, became a Broadway hit and inspired Mason’s all-male followup two decades later. Both plays deal with the intersection of gender and race: put together, as they have been in blackC.A.S.T.’s inspired adaptation “rainbow/streets,” they bring to life many common themes of African-American experience, from community to the innocence of youth to the power of love.

Director Jon E. Gentry ’07 first proposed combining the two plays on a hunch that adapting them to work together would produce a work just as powerful, and more comprehensive as to gender realities. He has found enthusiastic and capable support blackC.A.S.T. producers Shawna J. Strayhorn ’07, Kimberly D. Williams ’07, and Miles A. Johnson ’08 for his adaptation of the two scripts, which allows for a more dynamic depiction of gender roles in everyday life.

“The play really addresses male-female relationships in the black community, how they play off one another,” Gentry explains. “With a fusion of the two originals into one entity, the men and women are now able to interact and respond to one another, in a joint dialogue about family, hardships, and everything in between.”

“rainbow/streets” hopes to live up to its colorful title through the illustration of various emotions and personalities.

The creative focus on the play’s language requires the audience member to keep a keen ear and cue in to what is being said, while the contemporary music adds a more modern feel that to which the audience can relate to and in which it can get engaged. The messages of the play are direct, in such a way that they, as Gentry affirms, “take hold of the audience, captivate them, and then reverb with them in their hearts and minds.”

In addition to its fresh approach, “rainbow/streets” promises to convey significant and powerful themes to its audience. Its juxtaposition of the two contrasting gendered environments works with blackC.A.S.T.’s mission to present works of art that encourage people to think about situations and ideas that often go overlooked. Gentry notes that he has consciously geared “rainbow/streets” towards a broad, diverse audience, especially since the play “tells a message that anyone and everyone should hear.”