Theatre, Healing, Self-Realization, Self-Actualization, Sensuality as Existence and Collectivity

For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/ When the Rainbow is Enuf   centralizes  the essence, process and the work of healing both individually and collectivity. Shange affirms the acknowledgement of sensuality, the embodiment and the reclamation of sensuality. Sensuality that enables women of color to be expressive, to heal and to exist without limitation(s). In Audre Lorde’s essay “Uses of the Erotic” similar sentiments are expressed as well as the Spring 2014 production of an All Self-Identified Women of Color cast Vagina Monologues. These work of arts, though through different mediums  speak about self-realization and self-actualization through performance art and healing through recognition of harmful acts that demands and encourages women of color self-deprecation. Recognition  and expression of the sensual in service of oneself and other women who are engaged  in collectivity work as lorde mentions”For women,  this has meant a suppression of the erotic as a considered source of power and information within our lives” (53). Lorde acknowledges the detriments of suppressing the erotic, which I interpret as being the movement and the acknowledgement of one’s (women’s) ability and capability to love and care for themselves unconditionally and wholly.

In For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When The Rainbow is Enuf , Shange states “no reelin for sheer sensual pleasure/yes let’s go on & be white/we’re right in the middle of it/no use  of out/holding onto ourselves/lets think our way otta feelin/lets abstract ourselves some families & maybe maybe tonite/i’ll find a way to make myself come without you/no fingers or other objects just thot which isnt spiritual evolution cuz its empty & godliness is plenty and is ripe &fertile”(59/).  Shange expresses that the joy one gives to oneself is immeasurably and more importantly not inaccessible nor is it impossible. Instead it is attainable and fulfilling and does not require the permission from any outside sources. And in doing, one is able to understand and sit with the power the possess.

Much Like For Colored Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When The Rainbow is Enuf,  which was a platform that discussed and centralized  the voices, the needs of women of color explicitly,  the all self-identified women of color cast of Vagina Monologues highlight the need of collective processes of  self-actualization and self-realization. It is a public forum and it is a public declaration of wholesomeness of women of color.

Taken from the production of the Spring 2014 All Women of Color Cast

ALL SELF-IDENTIFIED WOMEN OF COLOR INTRODUCTION

Our vaginas have been best friends,

sassy add-ons,

lecherous side-shows.

Our vaginas have been quieted to the point of invisibility,

placed in the corner despite all their stereotypically finger-snapping loudness,

demoted to off-putting, off-center compliments to other vaginas’ “normal”.

Our vaginas,

and my mother’s vagina,

and my mother’s vagina,

and my mother’s vagina,

are battlefields for conquest,

mountain ranges upon which angry flags have violated the soil,

are chained and rechained and rechained,

are harnessed and commodified, and trampled in the dust.

Our vaginas have been left without voices to self-determine,

without platforms to sing our songs and reclaim our traditions,

without sisters to listen,

to love and to listen.

Our vaginas need air,

need room to breathe out all the toxic waste of colonialism,

need understanding and space and star-filled skies that spring forth from our own imaginations.

Our vaginas live in a world where all the colors are left for men

and womanhood has been swallowed in whiteness.

And tonight,

tonight,

tonight,

we are brave.

These photos of Amanda, Melissa and myself are reflections of moments when collective processes of self-realization and self-actualization are practiced and embodied