The Heritage Ensemble Theatre Company often likes to intertwine the familiar with the unfamiliar, so they are presenting two provocative works in rotating repertory at Firehouse. Audiences can experience the female point of view in Ntozake Shange's ground-breaking choreopoem FOR COLORED GIRLS WHO HAVE CONSIDERED SUICIDE WHEN THE RAINBOW IS ENUF, and then explore the male response in Keith Antar Mason's FOR BLACK BOYS WHO HAVE CONSIDERED HOMICIDE WHEN THE STREETS WERE TOO MUCH.
Ntozake Shange is a poet, novelist, and playwright. FOR COLORED GIRLS... opened on Broadway in 1976 and was only the second play by a Black woman to be produced on Broadway (Lorraine Hansberry's 1959 A RAISIN IN THE SUN was the first). Director Shanea N. Taylor will use the text to paint a picture of sisterhood while illustrating the struggles and obstacles that African-American women may face throughout their lives. Shange updated the play in 2010 after the film version, but Taylor has decided to honor Shange by using the original version of the script. Keith Antar Mason is a poet and playwright. Mason wrote his play in 2000 in response to Shange's choreopoem, but from the male perspective. Mason's play examines the violence and racial and economic injustice that Black men encounter in the U.S. The Heritage Ensemble Theatre Company's Artistic Director Margarette Joyner directs Mason's play.Videos