Self-redemption Through The Choreopoem

Ntozake, who is regarded as"one of the most significant persons in black theatre development", is an African American feminist playwright in the 1970s. Her works mainly describe the double oppression and torture which black females receive in the patriarchal and race-discriminated society. Furthermore, Shange creates a new form of theatre performance----choreopoem, which combines dance, music and poems together on the stage. According to her, this new form is a heritage of African-American culture and is extracted from African-American culture essence. Shange combines this new form of performance with the theme which she wants to express in many works and makes it serve the latter one.For colored girls who have considered suicide when rainbow is enuf (short for for colored girls) is Shange's representative work and brings her nominations of several awards. In this play, Shange makes a full use of the distinctive features of choreopoem and tells audience the seven ladies'living experience through their mouths. With no names, these ladies wear seven different colors'dresses, whose stories offer a series of vivid pictures of black females'double torture in the patriarchal and racial discriminated society for the audience. However, Shange is not sheer pessimist. As she describes the females'painful experiences, she endows spirit of rebellion to them and makes them accomplish the awakening, including struggling against the traditional and stubborn ideas, making great efforts to liberate one's soul and realizing one's value eventually. The aim of this thesis is to explore the themes expressed by Shange in this play, that is, the self-actualization process from enduring pains from outside world to rebelling against the society and realizing rebirth after discovering their true worth. What's more, this essay also tries to analyze the auxiliary functions of choreopoem to the themes.The whole thesis consists of five chapters. The Introduction part briefly introduces the author's life, works, basic writing strategies and current scholarship of this play. Besides, it also explains the main features of the choreopoem. The first chapter summarizes the pains the colored girls bear under their living circumstances. Basically, it analyzes the pains from three aspects: rape, abortion and domestic violence. In this period, lacking the spirit of rebellion, the colored girls can only tolerate the pains silently and console each other. Chapter two illustrates the colored girls'awareness of rebellion after a long time of sufferings and explains the rebellion through three manners. One is the unique language. Even on the theatre stage, the main roles of this play speak non-standard English belonging to their own circles, which is different from the standard English. Next is the main roles'behavior in their love affairs with men. They don't regard the conventional norms and male's thoughts as the guideline of their behaviors. On the contrary, pursuing their inner hearts to rebel against the convention, they do various risky things which are despised by the mainstreams of the society. Chapter three explains the colored girls'rebirth, which is composed of three parts: rebirth in individual identity, in friendship and in sex conception, after pains and rebellion. They finally appreciate the rainbow after the violent storm, understand their true worth and realize self-actualization. The conclusion part points out that Shange, taking her own experiences as the basis, provides the audience with a real description of the black women's painful sufferings, their rebellion and rebirth. Furthermore, she also adopts a new form of performance"choreopoem"to help illustrating the themes, offers a bright avenue for the bewildered black women.