"Dreamgirls" Goes Up in Lights

On April 25 at 7:30 p.m., Farkas Hall will transform into a Motown palace complete with tinsel, back-up dancers, flashy costumes, and 106 stage lights directed from the back of the stage out at the audience. “Dreamgirls” follows soulful starlets the Dreams as they belt their way to the top of the charts despite racial tensions present in the 1960s and ’70s.

“‘Dreamgirls’ has music you don’t hear a lot in musical theater,” co-director Lanair A. Lett ’14 says. “R&B, Motown, and a little bit of funk and gospel music are all genres that rarely come into musical theater, especially here at Harvard.”

This production is put on by the Harvard Black Community and Student Theater Group, which puts on usually two shows per year and focuses on the talents of the African-American student body.

Co-director and outgoing president of BlackC.A.S.T. Rachel V. Byrd ’13 says that each year the organization chooses a production that will generate a lot of enthusiasm.

“What can we do to serve the community’s needs? What do people want? What do people love?” she says. For her and Lett, the choice to put on “Dreamgirls” this year made sense because of the wealth of talented singers in Harvard’s African-American community.

“It’s the only musical that comes close to being a R&B musical opera,” Lett says.

In addition to flashy set design, “Dreamgirls” will also feature songs not included in the 2006 film version with Beyoncé, Jennifer Hudson, and Jamie Foxx.

Lett says that the vocal talent is the center of the production and the inspiration for a lot of the directing and design choices. “The audience can expect to be taken places by these voices,” Lett says.

—Staff writer Virginia R. Marshall can be reached at virginiarosemarshall@college.harvard.edu.