The lights dimmed and the audience quieted. A group of young women appeared from the dark corners of the stage and they gathered round. The chatting broke out into song and the spectators smiled.

Women take on the role of colors of the rainbow in the production “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf,” staged in Sacramento State’s Playwrights’ Theater.

These colors represent the obstacles the women face and they blend together to form a rainbow – a symbolic label representing the unity and sisterhood these women create with each other.

Directed by theater and dance professor Melinda Wilson Ramey, the performance is not a typical play.

There are no characters, but rather colors. Each woman’s color is paired with a specific piece of poetry written by Ntozake Shange. The poetry is about relationships the women have with the people in their lives.

The women come from different cities in America, said Breayanna Robinson, a senior theater and English major and assistant director of the production. They do not have names such as Sara or Jamie, but rather names of colors – Lady in Blue, Lady in Red, Lady in Brown and so forth.

Each one is finding what it means to be a woman and they come together to support one another through struggles, such as abortion and infidelity.

“Everybody is going through something at the same time,” Robinson said. “It has to do with relationships – relationships with your husband, with your boyfriend, your brother.”

The play is completely different from the movie directed by Tyler Perry in 2010 in terms of the process, Robinson said.

The play’s cast and production team had to create melodies for the lyrics in the script. Robinson said the process was “organic” because every song and every dance had to come from those individuals working on the performance.

The stage was set with big black blocks the women used to sit, lie and stand on. The background consisted of rainbow-colored curtains cascading from the ceiling and the lights were dimmed over the stage.

Clapping, laughter and cheering were heard from the audience throughout the room as the women recited their lines, sang together and danced to recorded and live music performed by two musicians positioned behind the curtains. The dance styles included hip hop, salsa and isolation, Robinson said. Isolation is moving one body party at a time rather than your whole body at once.

“You have to have a strong love for yourself first before you can really begin to truly love someone else,” Slaughter said. “I would hope that when women do come to see this they find a little bit of themselves in it and it makes them feel OK with who they are.”

At some points in the play there would only be one woman on stage delivering her poetry and message to the audience. Some of the stories dealt with cheating, abortion and abuse.

“My favorite part is all the times that the girls come together – especially when we are supporting each other when they’re talking about all the hardships,” said Elli Papadopoulos, a junior dance major and the color orange in the play. “It’s that bond of womanhood that really gets me every time.”

This production carries a strong message, especially to young women.

“I believe so many women have something inside themselves that they’re not too certain with who they are, and I think it’s because we are constantly bombarded with images in the media that try to tell us how we should look or how we should act,” said Shasta Slaughter, a junior theater major and the color brown in the show. “And when that doesn’t fit with who we feel we are it leads to confusion (and) sometimes bad choices.”

Not only does the poetry have meaning, it can deliver many emotions all at once like happiness, sadness and anger.

“If you try to fight against your emotions you are going to have a hard time with the play,” Papadopoulos said.

Jacquelin Everhart can be reached at [email protected]