SHANGE’S CHOREOPOEM: POLYPHONY IN DRAMATIC FORM IN ‘FOR COLORED GIRLS AND SPELL#7

A black feminist playwright whose theatrical expression derives itself from the African tradition of story-telling, rhythm, physical movement and emotional catharsis, Ntozake Shange carved for herself a permanent and classic place in American theater history. She has successfully broadened and redefined American theater to include the choreopoem as an acceptable, legitimate dramatic form. Not only did she popularize the choreopoem but she brought to American theater an art that is undeniably African. Shange’s choreopoem like African theater, is comprised of chants, poetry, dance and rituals. Shange opens up the theatrical arena to create a sensual experience that incorporates and presents the many facets of African American life. She explains in one of her most important essays, “unrecovered losses / black theatre traditions”: The fact that we are an interdisciplinary culture / that we understand more than verbal communication/lays a weight on Afro-American writers that few others are lucky enough to have been born into. we can use with some skill virtually all our physical senses/as writers committed to bringing the world as we rememberit/imagine it and know it to be the stage we must use everything we’ve got ( 8). Shange’s theater pieces work to raise consciousness individually, socially, and artistically and center round the complex notions of identity politics. In presenting a range of human experiences of blacks, females, black females, black artists, and black female artists, Shange reexamines oppressive stereotypes, incorporates role-playing, and highlights sexual and international politics all with keen insight into the impact of verbal communications.Transferring her own private experiences and political voice into a form accessible to a public audience, Shange demands in her work an emotional internalization of experiences offered, insisting that “ … a poem should fill you up with something /cd make you swoon, stop in yr tracks, change yr mind, or make it up. / a poem shd happen to you like cold water or a kiss ” (qtd in Lester 5). The manipulation of language to achieve ra