Last week it was announced that Camille A. Brown would direct the upcoming production of “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When The Rainbow is Enuf” on Broadway in 2022.
This means that Brown is to be the first Black woman in 67 years to serve as both director and choreographer of a Broadway production.
“For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf” is Ntozake Shange’s most acclaimed theater piece, which premiered in 1976.
“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,” said Brown to Forbes. “I look forward to diving into the divine Ntozake Shange’s choreopoem and celebrating her legacy.”
Brown will follow Katherine Dunham’s footsteps, who directed and choreographed her dance company at the Broadway Theater in November 1955.
And Brown’s resume is not to be sniffed at. Her credentials are plentiful.
Brown has received copious awards, including a Guggenheim Award, Bessie Award, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award, a Doris Duke Artist Award, a Dance Magazine Award, a United States Artists Award, 2 Audelco Awards, 5 Princess Grace Awards, and a New York City Center Award.
She is also an Emerson Collective fellow, a TED fellow and the recipient of a Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellowship.
As if that weren’t enough… Brown recently made her major film debut in the Netflix series “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” starring Viola Davis and late Hollywood actor Chadwick Boseman.
“Social dance for social change is reclaiming Black narratives, giving African Diaspora culture its rightful place in American culture, fostering learning and creativity and spreading the joy of dance,” writes Brown on her website. “It aims to create safe spaces for healing and connection and a creative environment for leadership building and consciousness raising.”
