Considering how many years I was involved in Vineyard theater and how many shows I was involved in, it’s surprising that I have only two T-shirts devoted to specific shows: this is one and the other will be up next.

I was the main theater reviewer for the Martha’s Vineyard Times when For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide opened at the Old Whaling Church in Edgartown in August 1989. It’s obvious from the opening paragraph of my review (M.V. Times, Aug. 24, 1989) that I was blown away:

At its most profound, theater melds language and movement into a whole that overwhelms the individual senses, an experience so powerful that it becomes sacred. Marla Blakey’s production of Ntozake Shange’s “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf” . . . is that kind of theater.

Reviewers get to see the show for free, but I went back at full price (which I think was $20) at least once and I’m pretty sure twice before the run ended. Some while later a smaller production was mounted at Piatelli Studios, a multi-purpose space in the building next door to the West Tisbury post office.1 I saw that at least once too.

Note the “Martha’s Vineyard, 1989” at the bottom. This shirt was designed for this particular production. Sorry about the stains. My first couple of decades on the Vineyard, my clothes were often at the mercy of laundromats so I avoided white for this very reason.

NOTE

  1. When pianist Cheryl Piatelli owned it, the building was vivid pink. After Cheryl left, the pink disappeared and the building was given over to various healthy activities, e.g., exercise and alternative health care, so I never saw what it looked like inside. In October 2019, Vineyard-based nonprofit radio station MVY bought the building. After extensive renovations were completed, the station took up residence at the end of 2020. If the creative energy of the Piatelli years is still around, I think it’s happy with the new occupants. ↩︎

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